


Hypothermia

by Lucidlucy



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Earn Your Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First Kisses, Hidden Relationship, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt and smut and feels, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, POV: Rey, RSSC, Reylo Short Story Collection, They have waltzed this waltz before, blowjobs in the dark, face riding, in-verse reylo, it was only a matter of time before I tried writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2018-12-11 08:43:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11710875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucidlucy/pseuds/Lucidlucy
Summary: “You hardly find merepulsive, little desert rat,” he said with honey on his tongue, a term that used to once make her blood boil but that she now acknowledged as a warped version of an endearment from Kylo Ren. “Or need I remind you of Takodana?”They had shared their first kiss on Takodana, in a forest very similar to the one in which he’d once taken her captive. Rey shifted weakly, trying to put some distance between their naked bodies.“That was a mistake,” she replied.“Really?” he asked, his chuckle only prolonging itself as he splayed the long fingers resting on her abdomen, pulling her closer against the proof of her irritating twitching, hard against her lower back. “Was Coruscant a mistake, too?”****Written for the Reylo Short Story Collection, Vol 1. Issue 2: The Choice.





	1. Arkania

_One. Two. Three._ She kept the count in her brain in tandem with the tapping of her fingers on her saber hilt, refusing to fall into idleness. Her limbs were already frozen—she could hardly allow her brain to do the same as she waited out the hours for the sun to set. Rey burrowed into herself against the thick tree trunk embedded into the canyon wall currently supporting her lean-to, hidden from view by the thick snow that had fallen overnight. She needed to _move_. She needed to hunt, as well. Her meager supplies — a single roll of synth bread and two strips of military issued synth meat — had all but disappeared, her water had frozen in its canteen, and hunger had settled in, but to go out in plain daylight would be to expose herself to the danger she knew lurked the area.

He had already had a scent on her twice, but she’d managed to lose him after her ship had crashed and burned with some quick footwork, quicker wits, and an inherited ability to survive courtesy of Jakku’s sandy expanses.

This Light-forsaken planet wasn’t Jakku, though. Arkania resembled more of a blue marble suspended in space, encased in ice and bitter winds. And now it had become her permanent jail—at least until the Resistance realized her ship had gone down and came to retrieve her from it. In hindsight, it had been a stupid idea to think that she could entrap Kylo Ren here after so many evasions. Now that he knew her intent was to deliver him to his mother, he had proven to be as slippery and hard to trap as a Mon Cala eel. As dangerous as one, too.

If only she could get to one of the inhabited outposts. Then she’d be able to get food, proper clothes—

_Or you could come out of your rabbit hole and join me,_ a voice caressed her mind. _Why make this harder than you must, scavenger?_

Right. She’d been after him for so long sometimes she forgot _she_ was also meant to be his prey, his desire to drag her back to his master always at the forefront of their bond. She twisted where she sat, stomping her feet quickly to try and keep her blood flowing. Her clothes, while suitable to most environments, were no match for Arkania’s furious winds and plummeting cold temperatures. She’d already shredded the thin overtunic she’d fashioned for herself out of some draping fabric into long strips, binding her ice-cold hands and blue-tinged fingers into a poor excuse for gloves. It hadn’t been enough, but then again, she hadn’t expected to be stuck on this planet miles and miles away from civilization for almost twenty-four hours. She’d expected to be in and out in an hour or two at best. Her only salvation had been her makeshift lean-to, tucked away into a canyon crevice, but she could already feel the strain of exposure taking a toll on her.

_Piss off_ , she bit into the bond, irritated by its existence yet also oddly reassured by it. At least there was a life on the other end. At least she wasn’t all alone with her thoughts. At least Kylo Ren had reminded her, despite her intense dislike of him using the bond to antagonize her, that she wasn’t entirely lost to the world, that at least one person out there was looking for her.

Not that she’d let him find her, but that was another matter entirely. 

_Language,_ he reprimanded, though there was a hint tired amusement behind his irritation at her rebuttal. _I could give you everything and yet, despite your current disadvantage, you still behave like an obstinate child. How much longer will we continue to do this? How many more times?_

_As long as it takes_. And with that, Rey closed herself off from him, dimming his presence in her mind to the equivalent hum of an annoying gnat, though not without him making his displeasure known as he banged against her mental walls a few times, demanding entrance. Yet Rey had become adept at blocking him after almost two years of dancing around each other in a perpetual stalemate, the only thing seeming to move at any pace being the strength of their Force bond. 

Once upon a time she could hardly feel him, though she knew him to inhabit a section of her mind. Nowadays Kylo Ren had become so entrenched in her awareness she could almost smell the scent of fresh pinewood from his soap on his skin, could almost see him in the darkness of the night, could almost _taste_ him—the bitterness of his morning kaf over the faint traces of his mint toothpaste, the tang of sweat dripping over his lashes and onto his lips after a particularly hard training session, the intoxicating burn and sweetness of cold Hamald Prime during lonely nights. It was maddening, and so learning to block him had become her number one priority outside of mastering the Force.

Not that it always worked. The more adept she became at blocking him, the more her cunning counterpart found ways to slither under her defenses.

Eventually he fell quiet. Rey sighed, rubbing her hands together, thankful for the moment of respite. The sun has started to shift and soon Rey would be able to leave her hiding place. She didn’t have much on her with which to hunt, unless she counted her saber, but desperation had a way of driving a person, and she’d found herself desperate many a times before. Going back to her ship was a horrible idea—the thing was probably a pile of ashes and smoldering flames, a beacon for the Resistance to follow but also for Kylo Ren. She hadn’t figured out the specifics of how to get from her hiding spot to the crash in time, but she’d figure out something. 

Rey finally crawled out of her hiding spot, cringing at the displaced snow as it fell about her head and limbs and shrugging it off with a few select curses. Straightening up after having sat curled up in a ball for so long had made her limbs stiff, her back sore, and what little warmth she’d reserved in her core was quickly dissipating the longer she stood about. 

Food first, all others concerns later. The sun was low now. She could move without being detected—hopefully, anyway. She started to move, grabbing her saber in fingers frozen stiff and trying to keep her mind clear, but she’d spent too much time in a sedentary position in the cold, and by the time she’d finally stalked a small non-sentient creature an hour later that looked very much like her next meal, Rey’s shivering had turned uncontrollable. She’d nearly dropped her saber twice and had developed a stitch in her side from exertion. Combined with her lack of food, she’d be in trouble soon. 

She shook her head, trying to get her vision to adjust to the darkness, blinking away the few snowflakes now falling and landing on her lashes. She would never get used to snow no matter how many frozen tundras and icy planets she traveled to, how many Resistance missions she covered under frigid conditions. Snow seemed magical, but now she also knew it as dangerous. She restarted the count in her head.

_One._ The creature stopped, realizing it wasn’t alone. Rey stilled, holding her breath and fighting the tremor in her hands, her fingernails now looking rather purple in the dimming light.

_Two._ Rey heard a crack. She swiveled. The small critter ran for its life, but Rey’s focus had shifted, looking for the immediate threat to _her_ life. 

_Three._ An ice shard. The sound had been made by an ice-shard cracking and shattering on the ground nearby. She breathed a deep sigh of relief, then cursed mentally. Her dinner had escaped. 

_Four._ She turned towards the cave her dinner had run. Then staggered.

How he had made it this far without her notice would always be a mystery to her, but before she could scream Ren’s saber had ignited, and he advanced, and Rey remembered a nightmare from years past— one in which she was confronted on a snowy field. Rey scrambled back, trying to ignite her saber, but her fingers were not responding and her thoughts were starting to blend together. She recognized the signs for what they were.

Trembling, weakness, confusion, shallow breathing—though she could hardly decide whether her shallow breathing was due to hypothermia or the fright inducing sight of Kylo Ren appearing out of nowhere and igniting his saber. 

_You always leave your mind wide open when you’re backed into a corner or tired,_ he said, _so I followed your visual cues. You’re also awfully noisy._

_“_ Leave me alone already!” she called out, muscles spasming uncontrollably now.

“Why should I?” his modulator greeted her, low and mechanical, the first time she’d heard it in two months. “You’re the one who followed me here. You wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t.”

“I wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t _shot me out of the bloody sky_ , you karking psychopath!” she shouted in turn, gripping her saber in a death grip and taking a step back.

“You shot first,” he replied, taking another step forward to close the distance. 

_Rey_ , _please,_ he called out, _you’re not made for this weather. Come with me._

And just like that, she was left with no other choice. She turned and bolted. Rey hardly had the energy to stand, much less fight. So she would run. She would run from him and his stupid compassion, and she’d continue running from every single offer he ever made her, no matter how tempting.

_Stubborn woman_ , Kylo Ren said, following at a slow pace behind her, saber still bleeding red in the darkness as he tracked her stumbling gait, unafraid that she’d get too far. The snow had started falling in big wet clumps, picking up speed with the markings of a violent wind on the horizon. She needed to lose him. She needed to hide, to wait out the storm and get back to the Resistance—

She slipped, her clumsy footing giving way under her as the toe of her boot met a raised block of ice hidden under the snow. Rey’s saber went flying as she tried to brace herself for her fall, but the sudden tilting of the world as she fell gave way to a sudden bout of vertigo in her weakened state, and before Rey knew it, the sky was spinning, and below the sky a dark cloaked figure crouched over her, a shower of red sparks hissing in the corner of her eye as the vulture above her shook its head and _tsk’d._

****

She woke up to the sounds of breathing in her ear and a raging storm outside. Rey’s eyes flew open, taking in her surroundings and fighting against a jarring sense of disorientation until the puzzle pieces started to slot back together. She was inside of a ship. She could hear ion engines idling. She was lying in a single cot under a heavy, warm blanket— cloak? _A cloak._ She was pressed up against something scorching hot. No, not something. Someone. Someone’s scalding skin.

And she was naked.

“Glad to see you’re awake,” a voice greeted from behind in her ear, thick with sleep. She could feel her bond to him waking up as well, glowing brighter with every passing second. 

Rey nearly jumped—she _wanted_ to jump, but found that her limbs were too tired, too weak. 

“Why am I here?” she asked, “and why am I naked? What did you _do_ to me?”

Kylo scoffed. “I saved your life is what I did, you ungrateful desert dweller. You passed out on the snow. If only you’d listened to me sooner, you wouldn’t be lying here like a newly hatched bird,” he continued in his tirade, but despite the words he gently tugged her closer in the cradle of his arms, and Rey realized he was naked too. “How do you feel?”

“Like I could kill you,” said Rey, though it sounded very weak a threat even to her own ears. 

“Right, that’s certainly a way to show your gratitude,” he sighed, wrapping her up so close he nearly cut off her circulation. Despite his harsh words his hold on her spoke of familiar intimacy and warmth, and it did nothing but confuse Rey’s circuits. “You’ll have plenty of time to try and kill me later. We’re stuck until this storm passes. For now, go back to sleep.”

“I’d rather eat hot coals. How long have I been here?” 

He ignored her insult.

“Eight standard hours. And may I reiterate?— you’re _welcome,_ scavenger. Next time you bring a death wish upon yourself by traveling to an ice planet with three threads for clothes, you will find me rather hard-pressed to cozy up to your skinny, freezing bloggin limbs to keep you from dying.” 

Maker, but he was _infuriating!_ She shifted, trying to get herself out from his hold with all her might, pushing at his arms and swinging her head about, trying to find where he’d shoved her clothes and more importantly, her saber. In truth, she felt… fine. Tired and weak, but fine. Her stomach no longer hurt from hunger, either. 

_I fed you enriched broth_ , he supplied, closing his eyes, his breathing quickly slowing with renewed sleep as if feeding his enemy broth then curling up behind her to keep her from hypothermic death were a daily occurrence. She shifted once more. She needed to find her clothes. 

“Stop your irritating twitching. It won’t help you now. In my thirty one years of life I have never met a woman as stubborn as you,” he growled.

“And I a man as repulsive,” she retorted, still looking about. They had done this too many times before, and Rey refused to fall into this trap again. She knew she was trying his patience, both with her back-talking and her insistent moving about, but she would not give him the satisfaction of finding her pliant under his touch.

Kylo chuckled, moving in closer. “You hardly find me _repulsive_ , little desert rat,” he said with honey on his tongue, a term that used to once make her blood boil but that she now acknowledged as a warped version of an endearment from Kylo Ren. “Or need I remind you of Takodana?”

They had shared their first kiss on Takodana, in a forest very similar to the one in which he’d once taken her captive. Rey shifted weakly, trying to put some distance between their naked bodies.

“That was a mistake,” she replied.

“Really?” he asked, his chuckle only prolonging itself as he splayed the long fingers resting on her abdomen, pulling her closer against the proof of her _irritating twitching_ , hard against her lower back. “Was Coruscant a mistake, too?”

He had gone down on her in Coruscant, against a grimy wall in the bowels of the lower levels of the city world, both of them wearing civilian clothes as Kylo lapped at her clit and pumped her full and Rey unravelled above him. 

Kylo leaned in, planting a soft kiss to the shell of her ear, nuzzling it with the tip of his nose as he once again gave her another reminder of how much he _repulsed_ her, complete with vivid memories through the iron hot bond.

“Or Ilum?” 

She had gone down on _him_ in Ilum, choking on his massive cock and relishing in the filthy sounds and words of encouragement she’d elicited from his mouth every time she managed to touch her lips to his skin, taking him to the root. She had been on a trip to find new kyber crystals on Ilum, having decided to build a double-ended saber to mimic her now long-lost staff, and had come away from it with an aching jaw and no kyber crystals, warranting a second trip. Thankfully the second trip had been remarkably uneventful.

“Or Moraband?”

She had trailed him to Moraband, and to this day Rey continued to blame their encounter there on the oily influences left behind by the Dark, the home to the Sith now bearing witness to her shame. Rey had thought he was looking for artifacts there, and perhaps he was—most of his travels seemed to be in search of ancient artifacts of the dark. She could not tell if he’d left with any artifacts, but he’d certainly left with a prize of his own: her virginity. He’d taken her on the dusty stones of a Sith temple and, once the pain had subsided, she’d ridden him into oblivion as if possessed. 

Yes, she blamed Moraband’s Dark influence for that lapse in judgement. Rey shivered, trying once again to pull away only for Kylo to tug her closer. He would make her pay for calling him repulsive, it seemed. No, she could hardly blame Moraband, for Kylo continued to pull out the list of continued trysts. With every remembered episode Kylo grew harder against her, returning his own brand of torture tenfold. 

“What about Jakku?” he continued, licking behind her ear and trailing at the curve of her jaw.

Jakku had been the biggest mistake of all. They had barreled towards that shatterpoint in their relationship at hyper-speed. She should have never gone back, in hindsight—there was nothing there for her but suffering and dead memories. But she’d gone back anyway, taking with her the last ray of hope that her parents _might_ have returned, inquired about her, _anything_. But they hadn’t. Of course they hadn’t. So he’d found her as she cried inside her dim, sand-drowned AT-AT and Rey had wanted compassion, had wanted relief from years of pent up rage and feelings of inadequacy, and he had offered it, and she had taken it willingly.

Jakku was the one memory Rey hated being reminded of the most. She’d been a willing participant, and could now only blame herself for her slow descent into madness at the hands of this man as he rubbed at her stomach, ambling ever down towards the inevitable heat that had pooled between her thighs. She whimpered, trying to rock away from his hand, only to rub against his erection.

“You’re impossible,” she hissed, hardly able to raise her voice to anything above a whisper. Kylo once again chuckled.

“And yet here you are,” he said. She tried to turn her head, only for him to gently place a petal-soft kiss at the corner of her lips. 

“I hardly have a choice now, do I?” she replied, trying with all her might to imbue the words with acid yet failing miserably, her mind now focusing on the pinprick sensation throbbing for attention so very close to his fingers. 

“You have always had a choice,” Kylo murmured his reply, once again kissing the corner of her mouth, and Rey could once again smell that hint of mint. She breathed it in deep then tensed. What was she _doing_? He continued, “More than I ever have. And you’ve always chosen to run, a choice I’ve never had. Always chosen to leave, unlike me, who am unable to. But you’ve also chosen to return.” Kylo whispered the accusation like a caress, drawing her closer and grinding into her back, dragging a whimper from her. “Why do you keep returning, then?”

“I have to—“ Rey choked on the word, clearing her throat to try and refocus her mind. She could hardly blame this sense of confusion on mild hypothermia, however. She’d been fully warm for hours now. “Your mother. I made a promise to your mother.”

“Hmmm,” Kylo nuzzled her neck again, fingers grazing over the neatly trimmed patch of curls at her apex before deftly parting her, “is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.” 

_Liar_ , he hissed into her ear, pressing down hard on her with middle and pointer finger, setting Rey’s nerve endings on fire and curling her toes. How he could do this to her with a few words and even fewer touches still baffled her, and yet she’d grown accustomed now to his body’s molten heat. Had grown greedy, wanting it all to herself and running through her veins. Lip caught between her teeth, Rey dared close her eyes, dared imagine herself elsewhere, imagine somebody else. Yet every time she imagined a different, nondescript face, they morphed into an angular jawline, a long nose, a wide, pouty mouth currently pressed against her skin, and soulful eyes that promised passion and revealed nothing else. 

“Would it make you happier if I were somebody else?” he asked, beginning a slow stroke that marked her descent into hell. His words turned dark, wolfish, as he continued, dragging sharp teeth over her pulse point, “Would it make it easier on you to excuse your cravings? Would it make you wetter to imagine me as somebody else, then? The traitor, perhaps?”

He sounded so bitter Rey almost laughed, but mention of her friend only made her remember that here she was, a whole day into her hellish trip, and she had neither heard nor seen hide nor hair from her friends—her only companion had been the man burrowed into her back, for better or worse. And wasn’t that what it always came down to? He was always present, always trying to lure her astray. She could give in. Light, she could give in so easily. She could let herself fall into this abyss, or she could fight it. She had a choice, did she not? Why had she not left? Why had she not pushed away the second she’d woken up? She should have.  

_Yes, you should have_ , he murmured in her mind, baring to her his unbridled pleasure at knowing she hadn’t nonetheless. _Yet here we are, little flower._

_Kriff,_ but the lazy circling of his fingers against her skin, damp with her arousal, made it hard to think. And that stupid pet name. And his stupid breath on her now feverish skin reminding her of how long it had been since she’d been this physically close to anyone. To _him_. Kylo leaned in further, tracing his name on her with every flick against her clit as he kissed her neck and bit it, tearing a hiss from behind her vocal chords. “What do you say, should we add Arkania to our list of mistakes?”

“No.”

Kylo’s hands stopped their lazy circling and, one agonizing second later, removed them from her entirely, leaving her bereft and frustrated. He shifted his body, ready to move away once and for all when Rey, with eyes squeezed tight and a sudden stampeding, thundering escalation of her heartbeat, reached out and grabbed his hand, stilling his movement. 

She had always had a choice. She swallowed, then whispered,

“Can we not call it a mistake?” 

Kylo tensed beneath her fingers and Rey could have sworn she heard his breathing stop entirely. “For today… for an hour—a minute. Just…” She pressed her forehead to her arm, taking in shallow breaths, all her fight leaking out of her. “We can call it a mistake later.” 

Later she would call this a mistake, as she’d called all the others a mistake. As she’d taken to calling her feelings a mistake. But for that moment, hearing the raging winter storm outside, Rey dared to want something more. Something she could bury under the ice later. 

“Are you sure?” he asked, and for once his voice was devoid of all mockery, of all traces of amusement and hints of that infuriating superiority complex of his. It reminded her of a moment a year ago, back on Jakku, and Rey hated her body for responding to it so eagerly. She nodded. Kylo sighed, once again leaning closer and kissing the back of her hair. Instead of pressing himself against her, however, he simply held her close, making no move towards her now aching core. 

_Perhaps later_ , he said, swallowing hard and breathing in deeply, disturbing the hairs around her ears on the exhale. She could tell he was holding back, yet it only took one quick touch against his mental walls to know the desire that hid beneath burned as violently as her own. He would regret this, too, she thought. Rey bit her lip, gathering her courage on the taste of copper as she pushed herself back into him.

_No. Now._ She insisted. _Before I lose my courage._

_Then why do you want it, if you have to summon courage to even find the concept palatable?_ He bit back, his arms turning leaden around her with the effort it took to hold it in.

_Because I want—_ she began, but found that she could not finish that sentence. Not even for herself, outside their bond, where he couldn’t reach it. To admit to what she wanted would leave too many cracks in her resolve. Rey remained silent for a moment, then sighed. How could she even explain it. Yet he seemed to understand that her silence spoke of loneliness, for he gently tugged her in until their bodies felt as if they had fused together from shoulder blades to ankles, slowly unhooking his arm to trail it down the dip of her waist, over the hill of her hip, and slowly inward over her milky smooth thigh. He carefully rolled his fingers between them, grabbing and lifting until he opened her to him, hooking said thigh over his own hip. 

_Imagine somebody else, if you must_ , he said, sounding achingly defeated, _once your minute has passed and you realize it’s me._

Rey nodded and she felt shooting pain encasing her chest, a melancholic acceptance from him as Kylo buried his face in the crook of her neck and angled himself slowly. He was still hard, and she was still wet—whatever their minds may think, it was impossible for the pure physical anatomy of two human beings to not spark upon such close proximity, especially two so closely attuned to the other. Their Force bond had seen to that.

Kylo angled his hips and hugged her so very impossibly tight, and Rey reached down and helped him until he could push into her. It was painfully slow, the collective, hard intake of breath between the two of them robbing the ship cabin of oxygen as he sank into her and Rey adjusted to the stretch. By the time he was fully seated in her, Rey’s lungs had started to burn. She whimpered, expelling some of her long-held breath, and the sound prompted Kylo into motion.

The minute passed, the way he felt inside awakening a hunger inside her that made her want to split in two, her body craving more movement, more friction, more _force_ — she wanted him to push, to pull, to pound, to _fuck_ until she forgot who was doing the fucking, until she could imagine another face. And yet he took it so slow, and that’s when Rey realized why it hurt so much every single time to imagine him instead of some faceless man with no identity.

He was making love to her. Painfully, tenderly slow, he was making love to her. 

And her body was tired from being nearly frozen to death, and the slow roll of his hips, the odd sensation of his thrust pushing on her, the way she could feel it against his hand on her lower abdomen—the whole thing _hurt_. Because she did not want slow lovemaking, she wanted brutal, heartless, no strings-attached fucking. And he was loving her instead.

“Kylo,” she let out a soft, barely audible gasp on the next thrust, trying to urge him on. 

He kissed her earlobe once again and pressed his hand on her lower abdomen, forcing her to feel him inside of her, while he cupped a breast tenderly with his arm looped under her, right over her heart. 

_“Shhhh_ ,” he said, nuzzling her gently. “Rest. You don’t have to do anything.” _Imagine someone else,_ he begged.

_I can’t_. _It’s always you_.

He stuttered on his thrust then, but when he next snapped his hips, it was with a sudden urgency to be buried as deeply inside of her as he could, and Rey breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe now she could—

_You,_ he bit through the bond, and Maker had he opened up the floodgates. Pain and adoration flooded into her until she almost drowned, the intensity of his feelings building along with the heat flooding into her belly, the need rushing through her nervous system as his hand moved down and he set a steady but punishing pace on her clit, urging her on, opening her up until she was so wet she could feel her own drunken arousal dripping down her thigh. 

_You_ , he repeated. _You’ve been my tormentor for two years_ , _scavenger,_ he repeated, grunting into her ear as he continued flogging her with thoughts, _I can’t sleep most days and it has nothing to do with my demons anymore._

He pounded, and despite the pounding Rey could not distinguish it from the slow lovemaking of minutes before, because it felt just as intimate still, if only more demanding. _I can smell you when I turn my head, Rey. I can smell the sea on your skin, taste your tongue on mine in the evening. I can taste you_.

He drove that last word into her with a savage push that left her breathless. _I can hear you. I can see you. And every time I wait for you to follow me all over the galaxy like an idiot_ , he said, digging his teeth into her shoulder and urging her on until Rey could hardly think coherently, only able to moan and squirm and—she will never admit it later—beg for more. 

_I wait for you to follow me so we can find another excuse to do this, to make another mistake,_ Kylo spat out, sounding angry and so eternally sad. _Don’t you see that you’re driving me mad? Do you think you’re the only one trying to imagine a different face?_

Rey let out a garbled sound, shutting her eyes and calling out his name, the two syllables falling as a prayer from her lips. On the next thrust she felt herself breaking under the pressure he built relentlessly, gasping for air that felt to be in short supply and sinking the sharp crescents of her nails into the pale skin of his arm. 

“That’s it, my little _mistake_ ,” he urged her on, “come for me. Give me this, at least.”

And so she did as ordered. 

Twice.

He didn’t follow her over that precipice. Instead he slowed, denying her the sweet peace of having brought him release as he once more rocked into her with the slow pace of a man offering worship, gently caressing the dips and crevices of her body while murmuring sweet nothings into her ear, and Rey knew — she _knew —_ that this was his revenge in full. That he would love her and leave her marked, full of said love and nothing else, then watch her fall from high on above and remain standing. She opened her eyes and tasted the salt trailing down her cheeks, and Kylo kissed her earlobe once more then pulled out, still hard and throbbing, still resolute to deny her. 

When their breathing finally came down to something resembling normalcy, Kylo pulled his cloak over their bodies more securely then closed his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Rey,” he said, hugging her close and leaving her reeling. When she refused he sighed, and despite her protests, Rey felt sleep settle deep in her bones as he grazed a hand over her hair and lulled her to oblivion.

****

Rey woke up with a jolt in a small room, alarm screaming in her head that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Had Kylo finally managed to make right on his promise to drag her to his master? She sat up, looking about only to notice two things: one, she was fully clothed, her saber resting on the bedside table, and two, there was a Resistance insignia on the white sleeve of her coat. She looked around again, then out the small portview that served for a window. There was no more raging storm any longer, but she was still on Arkania. Rey could still see the dying pillar of smoke from her charred-up x-wing in the distance. 

The door opened.

“Oh, you’re awake,” a female voice said and Rey jerked away from the viewport. “Are you hungry? You must be exhausted.”

In truth, she wasn’t, so she didn’t respond.

“Where am I?” she asked, and her female companion - a Resistance doctor, going by the insignia on the woman’s coat - smiled. 

“You’re at one of the outposts. We received a message that you’d been dropped off here. Whoever brought you left specific instructions for your care, and an anonymous message to be sent to us. Whichever good samaritan was behind it surely saved your life. How long were you out there?”

Rey’s eyes strayed back to the viewport. She doesn’t remember exactly what she said, only that the doctor left after delivering her food and pills she must take immediately. He’d left without another word, then. So that’s how he wanted to play it? Rey sighed, returning to the bed and finishing off the food without tasting it, a knot forming in her stomach. Then her commlink beeped.

_It has always been you, little flower,_ it said. Then, after a moment— _It will always be you, no matter how hard I try._

She stared at it, the knot in her stomach tightening further, making her want to upchuck her recently consumed meal. Then the message continued, and a set of time-stamped coordinates to a place she’s never been to were delivered to her comm, along with words that left her confused, dizzy, and so very cold: 

_No more mistakes, Scavenger. I will wait for two days. We can either put a name to this, or we can end it now if you don’t show. Your choice._

Rey stared at the message. She read it over and over until she had the words memorized, until her eyes itched from not blinking and she found it hard to dislodge the weight in the pit of her stomach. The hours passed, and still her eyes dared not veer away from her commlink. When the sun finally set, Rey made up her mind.

She grabbed her lightsaber and made for the hangar. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something different from my usual first tense fare. It was only a matter of time before I rubbed my grubby paws all over the Huddling for Warmth trope. I'm surprised it took this long to be honest.
> 
> Written for the Reylo Short Story Collection, Vol 1. Issue 2: The Choice.
> 
> A huge thanks to @these-are-the-first-steps / @reyloshortstorycollection on tumblr for the invitation to participate, and to @sleepy--dinasour for the lovely art made for this. You should check the issue out on tumblr to see the art.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope to hear what you think <3


	2. Takodana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a pushover and you guys asked for more. ;p

Rey listened to the engines, her eyes glued on the viewport from where she sat on the pilot seat, the flickering lights of hyperspace rushing past her line of vision at frightening speed. It helped. A little. The light blurred her vision, her focus, kept her from thinking too hard about the leap she had just taken.

How had it all ended up like this?

**TWO YEARS AGO**

_Humidity_. How anybody could survive in such an oppressively humid world was beyond her, Rey grumbled to herself as she whacked at a limp branch obstructing her passage. Takodana’s greenery had once upon a time bewitched her mind, knocking the breath from her lungs as Han Solo had piloted the Falcon into Takodana’s atmosphere. Now it felt like a hot, clammy fist trying to close around her throat as she tried to work past her exertion and breathe in damp air.

Coming here had been a bad idea.

 _Just one of your many bad ideas, Rey_ , she thought, unsure of whether the reminder was meant as a reprimand or as reassurance. She grunted, batting away a giant leaf and sputtering as it swung back, slapping her smack-dab in the face. She was not made for jungles, and Takodana was looking less and less appealing with every Maker-forsaken second she spent in it. The thought was reinforced when she stepped down on something moist and squishy, though Rey refused to look down to verify. It certainly didn’t feel like moss. With a deep breath and a shudder, she soldiered on, chanting to herself what a bad idea this whole thing had been. But she had to know.

Three months ago a connection had been forced in her mind to her nemesis — _‘Nemesis,’_ a voice scoffed in her head, _such a big, strong word for a scavenger_ — and though Rey had learned how to _mostly_ ignore him, as she was doing that very moment, she had hardly found a way to shut him out completely much less sever the connection. Hewas always there, always present during moments of weakness or unguarded thought. He wandered in and out of her dreams, taunting her, planting thoughts of his own there that made her cheeks blush- though she knew he only did it to laugh at her expense, enticing ideas she had often told him she’d never indulge, his own curiosity about her and insistence growing with every day he spent linked to her mind. Rey took in a deep breath and quieted her mind. She couldn’t keep from listening to him if he so chose to speak, but she wouldn’t give her location away, either. Guarding her thoughts, at least, came a little easier. And yet she had to know. What was he up to?

She’d been catching glimpses of rampant emotions for weeks now, each more raw and insistent than the last. Every time they’d met in a battle field, they had walked away battered and bruised and bleeding, but neither one had managed to gain the upper hand, and Rey was starting to feel like he willingly, purposely, chose to lose these battles. Why? Their… connection… their _bond_ , as he called it _,_ made it difficult to face him head on. So instead Rey had decided to change course, to stalk from behind, move as swiftly and silently as a scavenger in the belly of a downed Destroyer. She would catch him with his guard down one of these days, bundle him up and bring him back to Leia Organa kicking and screaming if need be— though certainly not without battering him up a little. It was the least he deserved after whacking her shoulder so hard that he’d dislocated it. And maybe getting answers from him on the way to General Organa wouldn’t hurt.

 _For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to push that hard,_ he said, having caught a glimpse of her thoughts. Rey cursed. She needed to be careful. _But you were aiming for my neck._

Rey scoffed. As if that made it any less unforgivable. The sound of her shoulder popping out of its socket still rang in her ears from time to time. What a sickening sound. And he so could have easily won, too, yet he’d walked away.

 _I’ll pay you back one of these days, Monster_ , was her retort, finally having given up on trying to give him the silent treatment. A wave of relief flowed through to her and Rey shook her head. How could he be so relieved that she’d finally speak to him when her first few words in weeks had been to call him the monster he was? And yet the thrilling knowledge that she had been missed curled itself in her gut, taking hold and warming her. She slammed her walls back up again, shielding her thoughts as she once more berated her idiotic reaction, knee-jerk as it had been. And despite it all, she heard the chuckle in her head.

_You’ll have to find me first, desert rat._

The greenery around her turned red, or at least, her vision did, as Rey’s blood started boiling. That idiotic name. One he wielded like such a finely sharpened weapon, and he knew it, too. Another chuckle ghosted past her senses.

 _Eat Bantha shit!_ she screeched into the bond before she could stop herself and, much to her satisfaction, there was a second in which Rey registered nothing but stunned silence. She’d startled him.

The boom of laughter than ensued sent a clutch of birds flying up and out of the high canopy of Takodana’s forest, and Rey’s lips sliced into a feral grin. He’d given himself away. Taking advantage of Kylo Ren’s startled amusement, Rey approached on swift, silent feet. He hadn’t realized she’d been tracking him for hours now through Takodana’s damp growth, and she was close. Closer than he imagined. His own laughter further disguised her movements, and a sick sense of satisfaction rolled through her as she stalked forward and ignited her saber—a reversal of their first meeting here, except this time she was the hunter, not the prey. Kylo swiveled, capeless and missing his helmet. The sight of his bare face squeezed at her ribs for a moment, her satisfaction burning hot and bright at the slash crossing his face. She’d marked him. He was hers, and she could hardly shed her scavenger’s upbringing.

She struck before he could truly focus on her or regain his balance. Yet his reflexes were sharp, sharper than she remembered them being, and a blink later his own saber sizzled in the watery, asphyxiating blanket that was Takodana’s tropical air, blocking her downward swing as he took a defending step back and dug in his heels.

 _“Attacking from the back_ ,” he hissed, scorn dripping with every word as he pushed forward, “is that how your Master has been teaching you to fight? How spineless. Fine. Let’s dance, scavenger.” 

Rey ignored him, yanking his weapon back with her own as plasma kissed plasma and locked, but his grip was too strong, his muscles made of iron, and he shoved her off with merely a grunt. But dance they did, a graceless dance of violent swings and swivels, feints and sidesteps that nonetheless became its own maelstrom, burning sparks and near disasters as Rey’s saber singed off two strands of Kylo’s hair and his sliced off a branch thick enough to crush Rey under its weight.

She evaded that one by sheer luck. Her foot slipped on muddy soil and she skidded backwards, only just managing to not amputate her arm off with her own saber as the world went arse over tit, Rey landing flat on her back. Kylo chuckled, stalking closer as if he had all the time in the world, circling around her slowly. To him, it was all a game, one he would win if Rey didn’t act soon—he’d had years of practice on her, after all. It infuriated her to face that fact—the proverbial salt on the wound to her mud-covered ego. It had saved her neck, though, but if they kept going at this pace one of them would lose a limb or get impaled for real, and she had all intentions to return him to his mother _alive_.

 _Your training is lacking, Rey_ , Kylo said, as if to emphasize the fact that he had the upper hand… for a moment. She waited for him to get close enough then kicked up and swung low, knocking him at the knees until they buckled and sent him sprawling on his finely dressed behind, giving her enough time to turn and run. He slid on moss, cursed, then cursed some more before he managed to dip into the well of grace he must have inherited from his mother.

They were in too close quarters - a miscalculation of hers, she swore under her breath - and she would need to get him disarmed and cornered quickly, or what little she’d gained in her surprise attack would be lost.

Rey glanced behind for a means of escape, her pulse at her throat, the only sounds in the deafening silence that of their breathing, hers high and thundering, his ragged and low. She turned to look at him. Had she trapped herself?

Coming here had been a _bad_ idea.

 _No shit_ , the cynical part of her brain provided, uninvited. She should have waited for him closer to his ship where she could… what? Run? No, she’d never run. But she shouldn’t have accidentally cornered herself, either.

_Kriff._

Kylo must have either plucked the thought from her brain or arrived to the same conclusion, his lips spreading into a smirk that turned her insides liquid—from fear or what, she couldn’t tell. Her brain screamed that right now would be the perfect time for a tactical retreat, and Rey ground her molars at the idea of giving up so quickly. Maybe she could stall. If she wasted enough of his time, appealed to his massive desire to hear himself talk, maybe she’d be able to blindside him— turn tail and bolt. Except sometimes Rey’s thoughts and her mouth didn’t quite work as they should whenever she was mad. So, in true Rey fashion, she spit at his shoes and goaded him.

 _“Bite me_.”

Kylo’s eyebrows tracked high on his forehead. It was such a foreign look on him, as foreign as the sound of true laughter she’d heard earlier. Every time she’d seen him he’d worn a scowl, brows riding low on his forehead, stitched together in a permanent frown. She’d hardly imagined that he could be capable of pulling off any other facial expression, but she’d surprised him again, and Rey dared bask in the insolence of her witty comeback for a moment, mentally patting herself for a job well done if only out of her own pettiness.

Until, that is, the surprise disappeared from his face and was replaced with a slow, smoldering fire in his eyes and a positively sinful upturn to his pouty mouth.

“That can be arranged.”

Rey’s muscles froze, trapped, held by some invisible force as if glued in place, a sense of deja vu rolling over her as she stared at Kylo Ren and bared her teeth. He’d given her enough wiggle room that her chest rose and fell, and her erratic pulse took off at hyper speed as he neared closer. She struggled against her restraints, muscles straining and twitching, their last—and very first—encounter on Takodana playing in her head on loop. She _hated_ it, and him. Mostly him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Coming to deliver.” Kylo flashed his pearly teeth, the sharp, pointy ends of his canines promising pain as he slowly sauntered over. He was _playing_! The absolute bastard. Rey balked, struggling harder. In reality she knew her muscles weren’t even twitching, but every time she tried to find the edges of his power, the loose thread from which she could tug to unravel his hold on hers, all she felt was a smooth, steely hold. No edges. No weaknesses. And him stalking closer like a manka cat about to play with his last meal for the day.

“Let me go.”

“I don’t think so.”

“This is hardly a fair fight.”

“Who said I play fair?” he chuckled. “You’re the one who followed me, the one who attacked me, and the one who yelled at me to bite you. I’m only doing my part.”

Rey tried to stall, to buy herself time, and she could feel her hands growing clammy, her breathing picking up speed if such a thing were possible, drawing from him an animalistic growl that made her skin heat up and grow goose bumps simultaneously.

“Stay still.”

As if she could move when stuck in his hold. Rey bared her teeth at him, which only amused him further as he came within touching distance, the hot air of his breath mingling with the humidity around them, landing gently on her cheeks as she tries to maintain a veil of defiance. “Stop playing. You win already. Either kill me or let me go.”

Kylo’s brow arched, his head tilting in that innocent way of his, the one that told her he was considering her words carefully.

“Doesn’t feel like a win, scavenger. Now,” his head lowered at an angle, slowly inching closer until his breath trailed from her cheek to her jaw, to the hollow under it towards her neck, sending shivers through her. “Stay still.”

“How could I possibly not—“

He’d released her. It took her a moment to realize the fact that he’d released his hold moments before, that her inability to move had been all her own, and yet another moment for the disbelief to set in before she felt the sharp edges of his teeth grazing her neck. His hands gently grabbed her shoulders, holding her still as his lips opened, the points of his canines lighting a fire at her core that sent her pulse reeling and, for the first time in years, Rey found herself unable to react, even as her mind started screaming the first of many _It’s a mistake! Mistake! Mistake! Run!_

She shook, quivering in her boots at the puff of hot, damp air heralding his tongue, the velvety softness of it clearing her mind of all coherent thought even as Kylo flooded her senses.

 _I know you’ve dreamed of this_ … _and not because I put those thoughts there._

Then his teeth tightened, gently yet possessive, on a patch of skin and Rey yelped. It was the pain that finally made her react. Not the pain of the bite, no, but the pain of his mouth closing down and _sucking_. The bastard _marked_ her!

She finally managed to get control of her limbs and with one strong push of will, she shoved—not before feeling his tongue smooth over his bite—and snarled. This time it was Kylo who found himself sprawled on the ground, his saber flying out of his hand, not that it would have helped him any this time. Rey was no longer captive to the mindset of a Jedi, her blood had started running the opposite direction, razing through her veins with the heat imparted by his display of possessiveness on her skin as she turned to the feral scavenger locked deep inside her psyche and pounced.

The first punch was delivered to his jaw, the second to a shoulder when he tried to buck her off. The third met his chest and he wheezed for a moment before he managed to tangle her arms with his, grasping desperately for her wrists to stop the onslaught. But where he had the advantage of weight as he rolled her over and tried to subdue her, she had the advantage of speed and dirty tricks under her sleeve. This time it was _she_ who bit him, and when Kylo howled and tried to move away she rolled him over with the strength of her legs over his hips, tackling him back down with a hard push to his head to _stay_ down. On and on they wrestled, each gaining and losing ground as Rey punched and snarled and kicked and tried — unsuccessfully — to bite again. It was some sort of need deep inside her, her need to mark, to possess, to say _this piece of salvage is mine_. And though he was no salvage, she’d marked him before. Belongings did not mark their master—

The thought made her heart stutter. It was the opening Kylo needed to finally flip her down and truly cage her, his thighs spreading her legs away from him so she could no longer kick, his ankles locking her down against the ground, and her arms pinned over her head. Their breathing mixed and danced between them, hot and hard from their seriously undignified fight, chests rising and falling like lovers eager to meet each other, but the look on Kylo’s face was not a pleased one. It was a hungry one, as feral as her own as he stared her down with hard eyes and tightened his fist around her wrists.

“You dirty little desert rat,” he panted, though there was little spite in the words. “You bit me.”

“You bit me _first!”_ she spat, though the laughter nearly bubbled to the surface. Of all the kicks and punches and knees to his thighs and sides, the one thing he focused on was the _bite_? They had devolved to childish antics and Rey’s fight had been forgotten for a moment.

Kylo showed his teeth again, glinting bright white in the fading light as his fist once again tightened on her wrists until she nearly yelped, working hard to bring his breathing down. And then, without warning, his lips crashed on hers.

This time she _did_ yelp, but he was unrelenting. He forced her mouth open with his teeth, nipping hard enough to make her eyes water as his free hand settled on her thigh, grabbing behind her knee and bringing it over his hip with flash speed, fingers caressing with such gentleness compared to the onslaught of his mouth all the wires in her brain crossed, unable to focus on one sensation or the other. It was exactly what he wanted. She opened her mouth without thought, fingers twitching with a desire to touch and only managing to grab onto air.

The only part of her that knew better at this point kept screaming that this was a mistake. That this was his punishment for the bite. That he’d used her dreams—confused, dark dreams as they were. Dreams she would never even consider in the light of day—against her. She hated them and she hated him and yet her mouth seemed to disagree as it provided him with entrance, allowed him to explore, and swallowed the groan that escaped him. Her throat seemed to possess agency as it allowed for a whimper to escape and meet him halfway, her legs somehow confused as the other thigh was freed and willingly traveled up to cage his hips. Sometime between getting tackled to the ground, kissed, and her body rewired to think only of pleasure rather than fighting, Kylo released his grasp, lacing their fingers above her and allowing her other hand free reign.

Her fingers dug into his hair, Rey’s brain telling her that it is softer than she had imagined as Kylo worked her, hips grinding down on her once, twice, seeking and successfully tearing from her a gasp that left her breathless, providing him with further access to her tongue. Maker but he knew how to use that mouth of his, sparking a curiosity Rey didn’t think she possessed.

It was that curiosity that finally gave her the courage to tentatively let her tongue meet his. She’d never kissed anybody, but if this is what kisses were like, she could understand why everyone at the resistance base seemed intent in the exercise, stealing kisses in closets and behind ships when people thought they weren’t being watched.

A few moments of curious self indulgence, a few detrimental licks against his tongue, a soft sigh from Kylo’s lips, and the spell shattered. She untangled her hand from his hair and the other from his fingers, her ankles from behind his back, and used all four limbs to shove him off once more. Then her limbs immediately lost their power, falling to the ground like shaking leaves as she stared at him. Kylo landed on his ass, gently wiping at the corner of his mouth, a triumphant smirk gracing those red, kiss-abused lips.

“What was that?” she panted.

“Punishment.” Kylo confirmed her suspicions. Worse yet, he knew it had been her first. That smirk said it all.

They stayed like that for a few eternal seconds, grimy and sweaty and panting, staring at each other. Then Kylo got to his feet and before she could react, he called his _and_ her saber to him. She tried to use the Force to yank it back, but he was no longer an injured mess of emotions on Starkiller. He had honed his powers, and there was no wound to impair his use of it now, simultaneously grabbing her saber and freezing her in place. The dread she felt this time had nothing to do with his kisses or his attempts to wound her.

He looked down at the saber in his hand as if considering its worth and Rey wanted to curse and scream that that saber was _hers!_ That he should return it or she would gouge his eyes out the second she got free of his hold, but like he’d done with his past and his legacy, Kylo simply stared at the metal tube of her saber — the saber that was his birthright — and tossed it at her feet.

“Next time I won’t be so lenient, Rey. Stop following me. I don’t plan to _return_.”

Rey watched him walk away, knowing he referred to more than just a return to his mother. His Force hold only loosened as Rey heard the sounds of his TIE Silencer taking off.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. Coruscant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let the Filth begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last few chapters have been so...tasteful. There's no making this "tasteful" so let's indulge in some smut, yes? 
> 
> Thank you all who have read and commented and asked when this was coming back. Thanks to those who stuck with it during the silence. I love you, enjoy.

He told her to stop following, so naturally she refused to listen and followed him anyway.

Her dreams had been plagued with him ever since Takodana. More than usual, that is. She kept dreaming of the gleam in his eye, the hint of teeth he bared at her when she dared push back, when she bit him, and he showed her he could bite back much, much harder. He stole her breath away on that silent warning and demanded she give past the limit until her tongue willingly followed his and he left her panting, and gods, but she could hardly stop thinking about it.

She’d waken up sweaty, aching, and bereft so many nights. Nights made worse by the fact that she _knew_ he was there, idly watching from the recesses of her mind, a minute pull of his lips upwards as he rejoiced in the torment he had brought her with a simple action. Her body remembered the way he’d ground down between her legs and lit a fire, then left it to simmer slowly, torturously, for months. She’d confronted him about it one night, with the moon hidden and the stars shining bright after she’d spent her hours fighting with sleep that wouldn’t come.

 _Why did you do it_? She asked, addressing him for the first time in months and determined to hold the flame of her resentment alive to drown out the fire of her arousal. Rey heard him scoff to himself, and then something amazing happened. She could feel him. _There_. Sitting on a dark leather seat like a king to his throne in the shadows. Rey squinted.

_Did what?_

_You know exactly what_ , she bit out, straining her vision to see him. She wanted to ask if he was really there. This hadn’t happened before. But something told her asking would come off as… needy, and gods, that was the last thing she wanted. She squeezed her thighs together and fought to maintain a frown. Her question was answered soon after, anyway, as he stood and took a step into the light.

 _Kiss you, you mean?_ He took another step. Rey scampered back on her sheets, hitting the cold hard wall behind her. Nowhere else to run.

 _Yes_.

 _Did you enjoy it?_ He goaded, but his eyes were tired and his hair unkempt. He hadn’t been sleeping. No, he’d been brooding. _Is that why you can’t stop thinking about it every night?_

 _I have_ not!

And she hadn’t. She _hadn’t_. Not consciously, anyway. Yet he had the audacity to chuckle. To _laugh_! At her! Bastard.

 _Haven’t you?_ He took another step until the only thing separating them was the edge of her cot, but that was not enough for him. No, nothing was ever enough for the man who thrived on pushing her, pushing her, _pushing her—_

Oh, but he knew. Rey licked her lips, staring into eyes shadowed by thick lashes. Dim, tired eyes. He knew. He was just as sleepless as she, a silent witness to her secrets. She must be imagining him. Surely, that was the only explanation for this; a hallucination brought on by exhaustion.

 _It’s mutual_ , he responded to her thoughts, then sighed. “Sleep well, little scavenger.”

Between one blink and the next, he was gone.

And that was only the _first_ time she’d cornered him about it. She had tried time and time again with little success, Ren being the master of evasion he’d always been, answering questions with questions until she was chasing her own tail. He was infuriating, and she couldn’t stop thinking of his mouth.

So when she followed him next, it was half as much a promise to his mother as it was her desire to finally, finally force him to answer her in the flesh. No more escaping the room, no more running away, no more diverting her for minutes while staring her down before their connection would cut off seemingly of its own volition. No more.

She landed on the lower levels of Coruscant’s dirty streets, head and shoulders covered by a length of fabric of inconspicuous muddy brown, effectively concealing her saber at her hip as it fell to mid-thigh. The air was cloying in the same way Takodana’s had been, but different. This wasn’t humidity, but filth, the body odor of hundreds of unwashed people mingling with that of exotic foods and strange perfumes, making her want to gag after a life of nothing but open desert air. She covered her nose and looked around, past the bright colored neon lights flashing erratically and the throng of pedestrians. He could be anywhere, but she felt him _here_ , and she would spend the night searching if necessary.

Not that she had to search long.

One moment she was drowning in the sounds and smells and sights of the filthy streets of lower Coruscant, the next everything had faded to the edges of her awareness, the sensation accompanied with that distinct feeling of changing altitudes, of her ears plugging up to tune everything out as if simply being in his presence had forced everything else to cease in its existence. Rey shook her head, a sad attempt at making the Force stop its incessant need to force her vision where he was concerned, but the streets beyond were empty still save for a lone figure she would recognize anywhere, even if his broad shoulders hadn’t immediately given him away.

She followed, the crowds parting like the sea though she hardly noticed, her attention focused solely on Kylo. Why he would be in Coruscant was beyond her, but she was not here to ask questions about what nefarious search he was up to this time. She was here to corner him and demand answers and nothing more (except, maybe, finally winning the fight and hauling him home, though at this point the endeavor was beginning to feel rather fruitless). Down and down they went, Kylo at a sedate pace and Rey following on silent feet through streets littered with garbage and machinery, the air full of fumes and smoke, dampness and light and debauchery.

Her eye wandered. For a moment, her eye wandered and she lost his trail, and that would forever cement how Rey remembered Coruscant: City of Lights and Debauchery. Before her stood the door to what she could only imagine was a brothel, which in and of itself was not a new sight to Rey, she had seen plenty in her life and certainly enough of them in the fifteen minutes she’d spent chasing Ren. But it was not the cherry red door and bright neon pink lights pointing to it that caught her attention, nor the gaudy sign of a reclined naked Twi’lek. No. It was the sight of what was happening right in front of it, and the sound. The sound of a woman approaching a rapidly incoming orgasm as she clutched the hair of the man on his knees licking at her cunt in full display of any and anyone who might pass, and so Rey’s eyes wandered, and with it her imagination.

But what she imagined as her steps faltered were a pair of soft warm lips that had once kissed her, the fleeting thought too quick to really grasp onto and yet too slow to quash entirely before _someone_ else got a hold of it.

 _Intrigued?_ Came his voice, silky and honeyed and oh so very taunting.

Rey choked on a swallow and had to move away from the scene in front of her to cough up her lungs in a corner, leaving the man on his knees to his task of making his lover’s knees quiver,but Ren refused to relent. Teasing her, ever teasing her, pushing her, pushing her, _pushing her—_

 _Are you wondering how it would feel?_ He continued. She had long since lost him in the crowd. _I told you to stop following me. You’re awfully bad at following instruction, Rey_. _Perhaps this time you’ll be better at it._

An image slapped itself right behind her scrunched up lids, a concocted fantasy in which Rey took the place of the woman moaning against the wall and the man between her legs… Maker, the man between her legs whose raven hair she tugged at until it hurt, it was him. Her stomach somersaulted and landed firmly in her core, a sudden rush of heat flooding her all the way to her toes even as she unconsciously pressed her knees together to stop it.

_Will you follow me now?_

Was that an invitation? A threat? A warning?

 _What else?_ He asked and she could _feel_ his damned smirk as he lost himself deeper to the alleys of Coruscant and got farther away with every step. Gods, but she could hate him. She could, but…

 _I didn’t come here for that_ , was all she could manage.

 _No? Then what? Your unending quest to save my soul?_  Oh, but she hated his stupid mocking tone and his stupid mocking smile and his idiotic mocking face. _Not that either?_

Rey bit her lip and cleared her thoughts, she wouldn’t fall for his games, promising to herself that Kylo Ren was all bluff and probably had just as much of a clue as to how to do _that_ as she did. No, she had come with a purpose, and she wouldn’t be sidetracked, not even by delicious images of Ren’s torturously soft lips kissing the delicate skin between her thighs—

 _Stop it!_ Rey practically screeched via the bond. He was fucking with her again, and he hardly denied it, choosing instead to chuckle and let his side of the bond grow silent again. And yet she couldn’t help herself, she stole a subtle glance towards the brothel’s door. The couple were still there, though it had escalated to hardcore fucking, tits to the wall while he rammed her from behind. Nobody else seemed to pay it any mind, such was the nature of the streets of Coruscant, but Rey flushed bright red from head to toe and practically tripped over her own feet to get away. She didn’t need more images. No, she needed to _focus_.

Maker,chasing him here was turning out to be a wild mistake. Just like Takodana had been a mistake.

 _Is that what we’re calling it now?_ Ren was never too far from her thoughts, and no matter how hard she tried to block him it seemed the Force bond had other ideas. This time it was driven to keep embarrassing her every time she thought of him in _that_ way. He continued, _follow me, then. We’ll make another mistake of it._

Rey braced herself and concentrated, searching for his life signature amongst the masses. He was far, but not _too_ far, and she could sense he had stopped. Baiting her, no doubt. She unclipped her saber and ran full speed ahead, refusing to let him derail her by playing on her emotions to keep her at arms’ length (though she had now began to wonder how prudent it would be to demand _answers_ regarding a kiss after what had just transpired. Wouldn’t that be playing right into his game?). She took a corner at violent speed, skidding two steps before righting her course and continuing on (no, she decided, that had nothing to do with this, and she would ask and he _would_ answer her). When she finally found him, it was in a dry but secluded little corner, the opening to a long forgotten alley of some of the oldest infrastructures in the city, walls made of brick and clay instead of iron and durasteel illuminated by dim yellow flickering lights that reminded her more of candlelight than electricity.

He stood propped against a wall, arms crossed over his (surprisingly) civilian clothing, no doubt to blend in during his search, one foot pressed against the wall and the other toying with a pebble under his steel toed boot, and fuck it all but he made a sight to behold with his beautiful hair falling around his face, shining and haloed by yellow light. Most surprising of all, his saber was nowhere to be seen. She breathed in deeply. This was her chance. He was unarmed. She could take him.

“You’re awful at heeding advice for somebody striving to become a Jedi,” he said without looking up and she bristled.

“I’m not here to take jabs from you.” What else could she say? It’s not like he was _wrong_ , per se. Her Master had warned her repeatedly not to pursue Kylo Ren. She had been warned nothing good could come of it, that Ren would only toy with her until he got his way, until he led her astray from the Light.

“What are you here for, then?” He kicked off the pebble under his foot lightly then straightened up, letting his arms fall to the sides slowly before turning to face her.

Perhaps Luke had been right all along.

“You know what I’m here for,” she replied lamely and squared her shoulders when he took a step forward, refusing to let her knees back out on her now.

“Ah, yes,” he said, inspecting her with those searching eyes, those burning, intense eyes that stripped her bare with a single look. “Answers, you said.”

“You will come with me.”

“And what of your answers?”

“I don’t—“ she ground out, fist tightening around her saber, the other forcing crescent moons onto her skin as her nails bit into her palm—“want them.”

 _Liar_.

It was such a bold accusation. It was also true. He took another step forward and god, she could die, why had she come here where she could _see_ his lips this close and feel his warm breath ghosting over her cheeks as he closed the distance between them _. Liar_ , he repeated, and she knew it to be true.

 _You want answers, you want more. Or you wouldn’t have followed. I warned you, little Rey, I warned you not to follow._ The next step brought him so close she was forced to turn and back away, but only managed to trap herself against a wall. She looked to both sides frantically, they were alone, a dead end to the left, the streets to the right. The few passerby’s paid them as much attention as they had the couple fucking on the brothel’s doorstep. Kylo smiled. _Did you enjoy the show?_

“Why are you doing this?” She spat out, bum pressed to the wall with no way to recede further. She could run out into the streets, she could…

“Is that the question you want answered?”

No. It wasn’t. It was the mistake she wanted corrected. The kiss.

“Why did you kiss me?”

She held her breath and watched his mouth and waited for the words she knew would come, the words that would put her at ease and finally put the last three months of her life to bed, leaving her free to return to a place of righteousness and sure-footed conviction—

“Because I wanted to.”

That was not the answer she expected. Her chest ached from holding in oxygen. He continued, though, never to be outdone,

“Because you’ve dreamed of it, and by extension _I’ve dreamed of it._ Because we’re linked and I can’t outrun you. I can try, but you find me every time, don’t you?” He closed the distance and she could feel his heat, the scent of him cutting through the muck of Coruscanti air this up close. “Keep fooling yourself thinking I placed those fantasies there, if it makes you feel any better, but I kissed you because you wanted it just as much as I…”

“I—“

“Don’t do us the disservice of lying. I can tell when you do,” he sighed oh so very softly, the last word barely a whisper, “Just as _you_ can tell when I do. Am I lying, little scavenger?”

And just like that, her heartbeat turned erratic. She couldn’t answer, she _shouldn’t_ answer. Answering him would doom her entirely. He reached forward with a gloved hand and gently tucked a straying lock behind her ear, eyes roving over her face, drinking in her freckles as he blinked one slow, unhurried blink. “What more do you want from me? If not to take me home—“

“—I _am_ taking you home—“

“—Sure, but if not to take me home,” he continued as if she hadn’t said a single word, letting her know exactly what he thought of her accomplishing _that_ , “what else do you want from me so you’ll stop tormenting me?”

“I want nothing.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Not even another kiss?” He murmured, closing in. Goading. Daring. “Would that, perhaps, _answer you_?”

“Ren—“

“—Or would you call it another—“

“—Kylo—“

“— _Mistake?”_ There was no denying the bitterness in his voice. “Or do you want _more_? Is that it? Do you want what you saw at the door? Is that what it’ll take for you to finally let me sleep a single night in peace?”

Oh, but he sounded bitter. A spiteful, petty part of her luxuriated in the knowledge that at least she had not been suffering alone. The other more _sane_ part of her immediately demanded that she shake her head, stomp away, and flip him off for the crass jerk that he was, but her whole body was paralyzed. Ren leaned closer. He was so close now. So close she could feel the fine strands of raven silk hair brushing her cheeks, so close the tip of his nose caressed the side of hers, so close a single deep inhale would force her lips to his.

“What will it take, Rey, for you to let me rest?” the words were a murmur, shaky like a leaf in the wind, the tremor cascading from his lips and into her very being as she tried to look him in the eyes and failed. He was too close, said eyes too heavily lidded, hiding the truth from her, hiding his frustration and his desire, though the way he stood rigid in more ways than one was proof enough.

“This was a mistake,” she whispered and he swallowed her breath without pause.

“We’ve established that. Just like kissing you.”

His assent speared her through the gut. Had it truly been that bad? Was she so truly unwanted? She fought the single traitorous tear working itself into a fury at the corner of her eye. A rush of air escaped him, breathed into her, as he trembled, and a desperate hand found solace at her waist as he pushed against her and she felt—oh. Oh! Right between her thighs.

“Want an answer? Here’s your answer,” he said, lips brushing hers in a maddening manner. “Kissing you was a mistake. Kissing you made me want more, and I can’t understand it. I should hate you, Rey of Jakku, but you’re inescapable. So put us out of our combined misery. Please.”

He was so close. He was offering. In a moment of insanity, she rose to obey his command.

The single meager sliver of space between their mouths closed as she rose on her tiptoes to meet him, the press of their lips tenuous and shy, confused, but nonetheless there, and three months of wondering if she had imagined what his lips felt like dissolved against the inevitable reality of Ren’s mouth gently touching hers. She hadn’t imagined it. It was real. Their bond _sang_.

It ended just as soon as it began. She pulled away to find her footing again lest her legs liquify and she find herself on her knees, and Rey pressed her back against the wall for support. It had barely been a kiss, and yet she could hardly breathe. Neither could he, much to her satisfaction, as she focused on the wide expanse of his chest while it rose and fell sharply before her. She fought to find her bearings, clung to her saber to ground her, and demanded her lungs work again. Above her, she heard a single expletive,

 _“Damn it_ ,” and then her mouth was being consumed. His hands gripped her face with a gentle insistence, forcing her to tilt her chin up so he could kiss her, devour her, take from her and give in return what the previous chaste touch had denied them. “ _Damn it_ ” he repeated against her and again like his life depended on holding onto her and letting her breathe into him, then plunged in for more. And just like last time, _exactly like last time_ , Rey forgot right or wrong or her plan to bring him home or her Master warning her not to flirt with the dark side. She forgot her own name as her hands fisted in his civilian jacket, pitch black as the night above them and soft as she pulled him by it into her.

He obeyed beautifully, pinning her body with his as he caged her in and endeavored to drink her in completely, the soft groan escaping his throat lost between one swipe of his tongue against hers and the next, her responding moan barely audible as they clashed tongue and teeth and lips, unable to move closer and yet wanting more.

And then he broke it, panting into the hot air of Coruscant to regain his hold on reality and let her breathe, eyes wild as he looked at her, but she only had eyes for his lips. Those blasted, traitorous lips. She wanted more, she wanted—

“Oh gods,” he whined. He actually, unmistakably whined, low and guttural in his throat as the passing image of what Rey desired crossed _his_ vision, and he immediately sank to his knees. His forehead pressed to her stomach, right above her womb, and he shook with his fingers bruising her hips as he held onto her to anchor himself. Her legs trembled, but he kept her upright as he breathed hot against her core and scrunched up his eyes. “Is this not enough torment?”

Rey nearly laughed. Where had all his taunting gone _now_? She asked as much and his eyes flashed as he looked up, a dangerous glint in the honey of his irises even as her fingers shook where she’d gently placed him on his shoulders. Her saber had long ago clattered to the ground, forgotten just like all of her resolve as they trembled together and careened towards a precipice from which there was no return.

She vaguely thought of her Master’s words about flirting with the dark again, but her body was too busy overriding all logical thought. And Ren—Ren understood. Ren noticed. Ren tightened his fingers once more until she could feel his fingernails through her trousers, refusing to let her go, his voice a shredded growl as he confronted her deepest darkness,

“Tell me you want it.” His chin rested on her stomach, face tilted to look at her in desperate adoration, “just say the word and we’ll both finally, finally sleep.”

Snuff out the flame, put it out of their systems. Do it so they may finally satiate their curiosity and, soon, forget. That was his proposal, and by the Maker if it wasn’t so deliciously tempting right now.

She should go. She should fight. She should run. Scream. Swing. Shove. Flee.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and marveled at its softness, her nails scratching his scalp until Ren shuddered against her once more.

This was a mistake. This was a massive mistake. This would end her. And yet…

Snuff it out. Put it out of her system. She licked her lips. Rey had fought her curiosity for three months and ended up here, pressed up against a wall with Kylo breathing heavy against her, only inches from her aching core, and she _wanted_. She was doomed.

Her nod was barely noticeable, but _of course_ he noticed. Their bond would never let them run away from the inescapable. He swallowed, she felt it in her bones. His fingers eased up on their choking grip and instead moved to her thighs, his head falling against her lower stomach as he took in a breath, held it, and exhaled. She could feel it, too, hot against her cunt, her body rising to the challenge as the heat became a rush of dampness.

“I have dreamed…” he began, and whatever else he had wanted to say was lost to the night as he leaned in and pressed his nose right up to the junction of her thighs and inhaled, hands grasping at her ass and tugging her in closer.

He groaned and mouthed at her and Rey’s fingers tightened on his hair, and that was all it took for them to spiral into a mess of limbs and rushed undoing of her trousers. He growled against her as Rey wrestled with his jacket and he took his teeth to his gloves, yanking them off with violent efficiency before his naked fingers got a hold of her belt, fighting to get it off before giving up and simply yanking down, taking with it her trousers, and her underthings, until she stood bare before him.

Then all frantic movement ceased.

Ren stared at her like a man who had found new treasure, and Rey tried her best not to squirm. She was bare, a leftover habit from Jakku to keep cool and avoid nasty things making home of her curls in the night, and Kylo’s eyes kept swinging from it to her face then back before she heard a small uttered _fuck_ that rocked her down to her very foundations.

His first tentative lick upended her world.

His first moan of desire against her wet, feverish skin nearly made her fold in on herself as her nerves sparked to life. She hardly noticed his actions as he hurriedly pulled her pants the rest of the way off and removed them from her legs before insistently nudging her wide open with his knee. His mumbled words of savage want against her cunt making her throb in ways she didn’t know until now that she could.

His hands made their way up her thighs in a gentle trail that was so unlike the assault of his lips she felt dizzy, the initial feeling of skin on skin, of his warm hands on her burning flesh as he trailed up and up and up, around and around until he gripped her ass and tipped her hips and—OH!

She yanked on his hair in surprise and he only growled and pushed himself in deeper, his tongue spreading her open, searching for her clit and eating her out until she wondered how he could possibly breathe at all, but that didn’t stop him. He pushed her feet farther apart and knelt closer, sitting on his haunches and pushing her up on the wall until she was forced to step on his muscular thighs or be lifted right off her tiptoes in a position that left her practically sitting on his face and _fuck_ , she’d been mistaken. He could _so_ do this.

Or at least, if he hadn’t before, he certainly was a quick study, their bond giving him minute by minute instructions of what she liked best and how to replicate the sensation. He guided her hips, moaning into her folds and plunging his tongue into her, encouraging her to ride his face pressed up against the wall as he fucked her with his mouth and demanded she give more of herself.

And if that wasn’t enough, he _talked_. Gods, he talked. Nevermind that his mouth was busy doing some marvelous things to Rey’s body, he used their bond to the fullest, though perhaps some of it was simply just _him_. Kylo Ren, enjoying her and putting it all on display. That more than anything made her wet beyond belief.

 _Fuck, you taste so good_ , began the barrage, his tongue curling around her clit before he sucked her folds into his mouth and grazed his teeth over them, making her twitch and shiver before attacking again with the flat of his tongue, nose buried in her mound, inhaling like a happabore in heat as he squeezed her ass and egged her on to grind on him. _Fuck, fuck, yes. Oh god, you taste so fucking good._

The whimper that escaped her was nectar to his ears just like her juices were to his expectant tongue and _there_ , tucked between her ribs and the Force bond they shared, she felt his own excitement and arousal. She ached to touch him, but he had her trapped. So instead he continued his mental assault.

 _That’s it, beautiful girl, grind down on me_ , he purred, _tell me how you want me to eat this beautiful little pussy of yours. Show me_.

Her fingers twitched, tightening her hold on his hair as his eyes fell shut, the grumble of approval vibrating against her.

 _Come on, Rey, I know you’ve dreamed of this. Fuck my mouth, cum on my face. Do it,_ he challenged, _give me all there is to give._

The fever went to her head. She yanked on his hair and forced his head back impossibly far until he was forced to bow his body to accommodate, and Rey glared at him before doing exactly what he’d wanted her to. She lowered herself to his lips, felt his tongue poke right into her hole with yet another approving groan, and started moving her hips.

 _Is this it?_ She panted, _is this what you want?_

He moaned his answer into her cunt, but she could hear it just as clearly in her head. _Fuck. Yes._

Fuck, but he would kill her. He was solid under her, and uncaring of whatever discomfort carrying her on his thighs posed as he snaked a hand up her torso, shoving her shirt up before brutally holding onto a nipple and pinching, twisting, tugging, the other hand braced against her ass for balance as her body began to shake.

He was always dominating, always demanding, but this time, this time he let her have her way, and she wasn’t a fool to not understand it for what it was, he was realizing her wishes just as much as she was fulfilling his need for her, and he no doubt would revert to the demanding man he always was, but for now he simply let her take, and take, and take, and Rey rocked her hips to the shrill song of their bond as she rocked her cunt on his mouth and chased after the fulfillment of her own fantasy.

“Gods above,” she panted, moving faster, faster, faster, and Ren smirked under her.

 _That’s it. Out of your system and into mine, little scavenger, be a good girl and cum_ , he said, luring her towards her abyss, and she couldn’t remember when she’d begun to let out such filthy little needy moans, but they hit her ears all at once at his words and Rey spasmed, she was so close—

—Then something skirted past the sensitive opening of her rear to press against that sensitive, virginal ring of nerves and, _fuck_ —

She came so hard her vision blurred, turning pitch black as her ears finally popped, and Rey crumbled in on herself. He wouldn’t let her go, though. Not until he’d licked and sucked and cleaned every drop of her as he’d promised—out of her system and into his _—_ and only then did he allow her to collapse in a heap of limbs on his lap.

By the time she came to Rey’s forehead was pressed against his clavicle, their combined body heat burning them both alive and he refusing to let go of her as he engulfed her in his arms and held her. It took her a minute to muster up the courage to look up as sanity slowly returned along with her senses. She feared what she’d find there. Would he have arrived to the same conclusion? Would he be ashamed, now, or having touched her as she was ashamed of letting go so wholly? Rey closed her eyes to steel herself for a second before daring to look up.

She wasn’t able to reach his eyes. His lips crashed on hers again and forced her to open up, and Rey tasted herself on his tongue, her body once more sparking to life despite the tenderness of his touch and kiss. He kissed her until she calmed down and then beyond what anyone might have called prudent before finally lifting her up off his lap and back against the wall. Then he slowly began to dress her, and Rey felt her walls shattering.

He went about it so expertly. So silently. He refused to speak and she found she couldn’t manage a single word, and when he placed her saber back in her hands, the reality of their actions came crashing back on them.

“I must go.” were his parting words. He was hard, she could see it, and yet he ignored it just as easily as he ignored her. “Perhaps now we’ll both sleep.”

Rey watched him retreat. For once, she couldn’t follow.


	4. Ilum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead. I promise. Just slow. T-T  
> Unbeta'd because I am just rolling like that lately. Mistakes are my own. Will get fixed...eventually. hah.

The next time they collided was an inevitability. They had danced this dance before, though perhaps not where Rey’s denial was concerned. In her mind, she was following him for the _good_ of it all, chasing him across systems with intent to fulfill a promise she’d made but one that had, slowly, silently, begun to have very little meaning or bear much gravitas. Still, she kept on doggedly insisting this was her reason, if only because it allowed her to ignore the bundle of nerves and conflicting emotions coiling inside her that she refused to inspect too closely.

No. Facing those emotions would force… something. Something she wasn’t ready to face yet.

So two months after that delirious episode of horrible judgment on her part, after having (unsuccessfully) tried her absolute hardest to shut Kylo Ren out for the sake of her own sanity, she boarded the Falcon and punched in the coordinates to Ilum. It was a perfect storm, really. Luke had tasked her with procuring her own Kyber crystals. The Skywalker saber had called to her, but she was much more adept at fighting with a staff than a sword, and it was time she underwent the same ritualistic rite of passage every apprentice must. She was to build her own weapons, weapons that would one day be like old friends to her, Luke had said.

That she had somehow stumbled upon First Order intel that Kylo Ren would be there simultaneously had no bearing on her decision to make the trip on that very specific day. None at all. It was all coincidence, really. She promised herself that if she stumbled upon him, she would fight him. If she didn’t, well… then she didn’t. And she wouldn’t be disappointed by that missed chance. Not one bit.

Right. Time to go.

She hit atmosphere and jumped to hyperspace, then sighed and leaned back in her chair, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms. She was tired. So tired. Two months’ worth of exhaustion burrowed behind her lids and under her eyes as she fought between seeking the rest she needed and having to confront her dreams, because he was there. He was _always_ there, and unlike her waking hours, she couldn’t very well control what happened when her walls lowered enough to admit to herself that she wanted him. She wanted _it_. Whatever _it_ had been the last time they’d met on Coruscant, what felt like eons ago, she wanted it, craved it. Rey had understood craving something more than most people in life—she had, after all, spent her existence craving for things, for food, for shelter, for company, for family, for affection—but she also understood the power such cravings could have over her. She had prided herself in controlling those needs, in suppressing them, in banishing them from the forefront of her mind until all that was left was a distant hum and the telltale gnawing of her hunger when food was not available.

This, though, this wasn’t a hum. This was a persistent, unnerving cry calling to something primal within herself she had never known existed. Rey licked her lips, breathing deeply and working to quiet her mind.

She could feel him there, just at the edge of her consciousness, the never ending shadow of his silence when he chose to be. He must be distracted. She could hardly feel him, not like when he’s engaged in driving her mad. No, in those moments of uncomfortable intimacy, of being trapped in a bubble of their own making, he’s as brilliant as the sun. Now he’s dim. Busy, probably.

She needed to concentrate. Going through the paces of building a saber as Luke had explained to her, afraid she’d forget. Hope bloomed in her chest regardless of the fear, however. Soon, soon she’d have something that would belong to her and _only_ to her. Nobody else could claim dominion over it. It would be her possession, something that responded to her only, that sang with her touch. She sighed. That day was within reach.

Soon.

That thought lulled her to sleep for what must have been hours yet felt like minutes. Behind her lashes, she saw the silhouette of a face she’d come to know so well between the watery shafts of moonlight of her dreams and the dim glow of Coruscanti alleyway lamps. The silhouette smiled, or at least, she thought it did, and warmth spread down her limbs. She was pulled deeper into sleep, a comfortable blanket that dissipated the everlasting loneliness. She was no longer desperate, no longer pushing her body until she collapsed with exhaustion. She was only wary. Yet never in moments like these, when a part of him caressed her temples and made promises of guarding over her rest.

When she woke up, the Falcon beeped all sorts of noises to inform her she’d arrived at her destination. _The_ destination. She could feel him so much closer now than before, and her, running to him. For that was what it was.

Rey docked out of sight and gripped the Skywalker saber tighter against her side, looking to the yawning mouth of the dark cave, a woman ready to descend to the underworld in search of a pomegranate seed, the beckoning pulling at the very strings of her soul as she took her first brave step away from the light.

The cave’s passageways wound slowly, crystals of all shapes and sizes glittering like their own small universe from where they poked out of holes and up from the ground and seemed ready to rain on her head, yet none called to her and so she marched on, forgetting her original thoughts about Ben Solo— _Kylo_ , she reminded herself, his name is _Kylo—_ in her pursuit of what dragged her further inside like a physical pull. It was so dark, so dark. She turned on the Skywalker saber, her only light source, and advanced as it widened then stopped—

—her blue light was joined by a red glow and the thundering of her heartbeat in her ears.

Of all caves. Of _all places._

 _“_ They called to me,” he said simply, not even turning. She traced the creases of his tunic along the seam that followed his spine and clamped down, nearly biting her tongue in the process.

“You have a piece of me,” he continued, head hung while the other hand held onto his ignited saber carelessly. She heard him sigh as Kylo turned and tilted his head, clever eyes glowing oddly crimson from his saber before he deigned to look her in the eye. “Somewhere, it must be the same for you. They called for me.”

So. That explained his presence in this very cave.

When he extended his hand and splayed his fingers, two perfect crystals, glowing as though they’d finally found their perfect match, sang in unison for her to touch them with as much reverence as they touched a piece of her soul. Her fingers stretched towards them before flinching back and Rey once more focused on those clever eyes, the ones studying her as if attempting to memorize her. “What do you mean? They’re yours then, aren’t they?”

“Don’t play stupid.”

That’s it. That is all he’d say on the matter. His hand remained stretched in an offering. When she made no move to approach, Kylo switched off his blade and dropped it on the ground, eyes glued on hers with an intensity that refused to abate. Rey licked her lips. His gaze shifted.

“I—” Her tongue stalled. What could she possibly say? Thanks? No, thanks.

It would sound too much like delayed gratitude for something else, something performed and unspoken and hardly forgotten despite her attempts, and him curling his fingers towards the stones as if calling her forward. She swallowed. His eyes hadn’t budged from her Cupid’s bow.

They were muddy green now by the light of her saber, like the murky waters she was stepping into. He breathed and she withheld her own. The crystals hummed, pulsed, _begged—_

 _—just_  like the primal _thing_ nestled between her ribs and at the junction of her thighs.

“I don’t bite,” he tried for humor. Rey would have laughed if it didn’t make her feel as though she were boiling from the inside out. Dreaming of him was nothing like being in his presence.

“I’ve heard that before. I know for a fact you lie.” His lips quirked.

“Take them.”

“What would you want in exchange?”

A frown and the muddled green of murky waters became dark storm clouds.

“I want nothing from you.”

_Oh._

How could she explain the twinge in her chest, the sudden tingling of her fingertips from strangled circulation, the painful shutting of her windpipe? She tried to swallow past it and managed only to mute herself further, her embarrassment and misery a leaden block refusing air in or out. Kylo closed his eyes, lashes pinched in sudden understanding at the influx of _pain…_

“I didn’t mean it that way. I’d hoped—”

“You’d hoped _what_?”

She knew she sounded bitter even in her relief. Rey finally forced herself to take a deep breath. To face her boogeyman turned punishing fantasy. His expression, so intense and pointed before, had clouded over as she watched him physically retreat behind all his walls. Before Rey could form a word he took her choices from her and stomped into her personal space, yanking her closer with a crushing grip on her fist until she was forced to either splay her fingers wide open or lose all circulation ( _again)_. Two crystals were dropped in the center of it, her hand manhandled into a fist around them, and a blink later he was stomping back to retrieve his saber.

When she looked back at this moment, she would have loved to say that her _plans_ had spurred her into action.

The truth was she panicked.

As soon as Kylo shoved past her, she dropped the Skywalker saber and grabbed his arm, nails digging into the crook of his elbow to keep him from leaving, from disappearing like a wraith in the night, a sinful sensation in her veins and nothing more when the dreaming ended and reality crashed back into her. The Skywalker saber fell and shut off on impact, the light leeching from the kyber crystals around them, from his eyes, leaving her floating in the darkest vacuum with only her connection to his elbow and her pulsing krystals and her own pulse grounding her in reality.

“Wait.”

Silence.

“Don’t go.”

His silence was so daming. She almost preferred it when he was intent in driving her insane.

“Don’t—don’t go. I’d hoped…”

“You’d hoped _what?”_ his hiss bit deep into bone, into marrow. How easily he could turn her words against her. She was glad for the dark. It was so oppressive, and yet… and yet so liberating. He couldn’t see her, just as she couldn’t see his expression. She could only hear his elevated breathing and hoped hers didn’t sound like hyperventilating to his ears. Rey forced herself to continue swallowing past a rapidly drying throat. She blindly pocketed the crystals he'd given her and then took a careful step forward. It was enough to bring her closer, to feel his heat through the layers between them. The darkness gave her courage.

She remembered his gentle touch from months ago and touched him similarly. She remembered his eagerness to please and felt a surge of twin desire now, when he was so close and so far away, already retreating as an unbidden part of her cried for him to please don't abandon her, too. Her trembling fingers gently ran down the ribbed texture of his sleeve, as abrasive as his personality, until she reached a gloved hand. With a quick inhale matched by him she tugged blindly at the fingers of it, the act of ungloving a single hand harder than climbing a mountain, and yet she persisted. When she felt bare skin against bare skin she almost jerked away as if burnt by the sheer warmth of it. The glove fell to the ground with the softest of sounds. His fingers were tense beneath hers, as if he were afraid to move for fear of spooking her, and in this he would be right. But they were in the dark, and he couldn’t see her, so she moved closer.

She thought of all the reasons she _shouldn’t_ do this. What would Luke think? Leia? How could she face her friends after this? But then she remembered the alley, and an indescribable need to even the playing field, to repay—not a kindness, per se. He hadn't been _kind_ as he’d goaded her then dragged her towards an orgasm. No, not a kindness. But she needed to repay _something_. It was as though the balance had been skewed and she need right it. And in this, at least, she had a choice. Choices were precious to her. Scavengers did not remain in debt of another for long.

So she made a choice.

She set aside goals and expectations and focused on two things: the singular feel of his hand in hers and the darkness that cloaked her actions like a well-kept secret.

_What are you doing?_

_Of course_ he’d choose to speak up now. Their bond flared bright and she squeezed her eyes closed as if blocking out the sun.

 _Let me. Please, just please say nothing, else I won’t have…_ the sentence died as quietly as it had begun.

Kylo’s fingers twitched. Finally.

_Won’t have what, Rey?_

How could she even say it out loud? She couldn’t. But there was now something she must do else she walk out of this cave feeling like the balance remained one-sided, and as she dropped to her knees and allowed her hands to follow her descent to his hip and thigh to guide herself, to make sure she didn’t lose him to the dark abyss, she heard Kylo’s sharp inhale and exulted.

Finally. _Yes_. That is exactly what she couldn’t vocalize before. This she could rationalize. _Power_. Power over him. It was, in a sense, a form of winning. She wanted her power back. She has given him all of it in an alley in Coruscant while he suckled at her clit and stared at her on his knees, and she wanted a modicum of control back.

So she took it.

Her fingers gently moved forward, searching for the hem of his tunic then up until her nails met naked skin at his waist and Kylo had stopped breathing, and Maker, _yes, that little noise he made_ — that little noise went straight to her clenching core.

“Rey.”

“Please,” she begged.

 _Please don’t say anything_. Please say something else. _Please, don’t leave me here exposed and vulnerable_. Please let me repay the favor. _Please let me have a piece of you like you now have a piece of me_. All of these things she wished to say, none of them conveyed.

Rey bit down on her bottom lip and, before she could chicken out, dug her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and tugged down with one fluid motion, feeling the fabric pool at his feet and over her knees where she rested between them. And then her fingers followed their path and _fuck_ , to feel his muscles twitching, each shiver cascading down, chasing after her fingertips, was intoxicating.

The next time he said her name was in a strangled choke. What would her friends think of seeing her on her knees relishing that sound? She almost backed away then, feeling like a hypocrite. What kind of person fought for the light and then did _this_ with her opponent? Seduce, skulk around in shadows...

But…

“Rey,” his voice cut off all train of thought. She had never heard him whisper her name so adoringly. Or perhaps she had, and simply hadn’t noticed. When all she now had to aid her was her sense of touch, her sense of hearing, everything became _more_. The things he could do with that voice.

She pushed his tunic out of the way before she could vacillate further and gripped him.

He hissed. She felt his whole body jerk, and relaxed her grip at his continued noise.

“Sorry,” Rey mumbled, feeling her cheeks flame with mortification, thankful of the dark for the tenth time that day. “I haven’t done this before.”

There was a soft, awkward pat on her head a few tense seconds later as his naked hand tried to find her, and she would laugh but her nerves and the fluttering of her lashes silenced her when he finally found what he was looking for and gently brushed her hair aside, fingers dipping towards the back of her neck and angling her head up. A moment later, wide soft lips pressed to her forehead with foreign tenderness and Rey melted.

Perhaps he thanked the darkness, too.

His other hand wrapped around hers, and Rey’s breath hitched as she felt the velvety burn of his cock glide under her palm, then her nerves turning to live wire at the rough rumble of his voice in her ear saying,

“Spit on it.”

Damn.

There was no going back.

She leaned forward and used her sense of touch until she could feel the broad head of it pressing against her lips, listening to Kylo trying to breathe normally above her while gently caressing her hair. She gave a broad lick out of instinct, wanting, no, _needing_ to know the taste of him, to own it before she let some of her own spit dribble over her hand to aid the slow stroking motions he was guiding her through. She could feel him twitching, growing at such a rapid pace it should have been alarming. Knowing she did _this_ to him had her wet in minutes and the greedy scavenger in her wanted _more._

 _If it happens in the dark it doesn’t count,_ Rey thought to herself.

She thought she heard him snort, but perhaps she imagined it. Instead she was gifted with a groan when she gripped him tighter and yanked, his hand falling off hers and his fingers twitching against her scalp, almost but not quite grabbing a fistful of her hair.

She let more spittle lubricate the head of his cock as she swirled up to grab it, dipping the pad of her thumb into the opening to mix it with something equally warm but more slippery. He was leaking for her and Rey swallowed. Just because she hadn’t _done_ this doesn’t mean she hadn’t seen it performed before. The holonet was a wonderful thing, and Kylo’s shocked gasp and instinctual push of his hips forward at the feeling only made her want to repeat it again. So she did.

His words started coming slowly, strained and whispered between the short little reactive noises he kept trying to rein in. First it was only her name, Kylo letting her explore to her heart’s content without pushing for more except for the occasional, desperate jolt forward as he tried to keep himself from just rutting in her hand with abandon. And then it began, the neverending litany between grunts and groans that drove her into a frenzy:

“Rey…” he uttered like a prayer. “Maker, yes, just like that.”

It was so low and yet being deprived of her vision only made her listen harder.

“ _Fuck_ ,” it began with a whisper. “Yes. Your hand feels so good.”

She pumped faster. His groan rumbled in his chest but never escaped, caught inside as he held his breath and tried not to move. Not that it lasted too long, because he had given her a taste of something forbidden and she wanted it for her own in its entirety, and if it meant exhausting her hand and breaking her jaw, she’d get it out of him.

Throwing all worries and insecurities to the wind, Rey wet her lips then opened them, guiding him closer with each tug until his cock met her tongue and Kylo jumped out of his skin in her hand. She wrapped her lips around the tip before he could even so much as breathe in another gulp of air and immediately sucked. _Hard._

_“FUCK!”_

The fingers twitching against her scalp turned into an automatic painful fist yanking at her roots, the pain going straight to her clit, and Rey closed her eyes in determination as her smug smile wrapped around him and began moving in earnest. It took her a few seconds to find an actual pace that matched her hand while she luxuriated in the filth spilling from him unrestrained now that she had him in her mouth.

 _Fuck_ , began the words, _yes. God, Maker, take it. When did you learn this?_

 _I hadn’t. You’re the first_ , she shot back still feeling smug, and he understood. Never let it be said Rey was not a quick learner, and as she kept prodding, digging for the things he liked most, then repeating them for effect around his throbbing cock, Kylo’s knees started to shake.

He stuttered a word through the bond and failed to keep up his train of thought when Rey ventured past the first third of him, her mouth slowly stretching to capacity, and then he began to move.

“Yes, sweetheart, fuck me. Just like that,” he murmured, rocking his hips lightly, perhaps too afraid to hurt her, “suck my cock just like that, Rey. You feel so good. You’re so fucking perfect.”

Wow, but she’d never heard him this animated. Could she get more? She was itching to touch herself and this now felt like a race to the finish line. She wanted to get there with him as he continued to praise her and tell her how much he loved the feel of her tongue, and when her teeth lightly scraped against his shaft as she readjusted, singlehandedly tugging down on her pants so she could join him with a hand between her legs, his snarl all but liquified her bones.

Impatient, she grabbed his other hand and brought it to her head, showing him via their bond what she wanted him to do so she could tug on her own garments with both hands free and, damn it, if his jerk forward to the back of her throat didn’t do inexplicable things. She nearly gagged and he pulled back quickly yet she’d heard his whine as he continued to fuck her mouth like a man whose world was rearranging itself, sentences broken and thoughts incoherent. He wanted more.

Rey pushed wet fingers into her opening and whimpered around him as her thumb met her clit, their bond breaking wide open and Kylo turning to stone at the sudden rush of feeling coming from her end. He stilled for a moment then began to move again, expletives murmured up to the cave’s ceiling, fingers flexing against her scalp before Rey swatted him away as she pumped herself full and felt that dangerous edge approach closer.

He stilled once more and she felt his confusion, the twinge of rejection before the dawning understanding as Rey took a deep breath and attempted to take him in further. He let out a soft curse and bent himself forward into her, his hair grazing her shoulder.

 _Move,_ she demanded. His fingers moved to her shoulders and squeezed, and he did as ordered. A shallow rocking that kept bumping the back of her throat every once in a while.

“Take more,” he begged, “I know you can. God, please. Take more. Fuck yourself with your fingers for me. Please.”

He was begging now, begging her to swallow him whole, begging her to push another finger into her pussy, begging her to please, please, _please_ come on her fingers. He wanted the adrenaline rush of feeling her orgasm via their unbreakable connection, and she’d be lying if she didn’t want to feel him shatter to itty bitty pieces. Rey breathed in deep through her nose, pushed out her tongue to accommodate more of him, and prayed all the holonet videos she’d watched during feverish, furious nights trying to sate her thirst for this very man had the right of it as she pushed her head forward and forced him past her gag reflex. She hoped she wouldn’t embarrass herself and fought the need to gag.

She pulled back and did it again, feeling more sure of herself even if it was a struggle.

The sound he made could not be described in basic or in any other language she knew for that matter, and what finally pushed her over wasn’t the following shout as he came down her throat and Rey worked to swallow. No. What finally made her walls violently contract and her clit throb like it had been pinched was the distinct bonded feeling crashing into her of his vision blurring and his nerves splintering and his mind blanking entirely, a brilliant white void filled with nothing but the sensation she gave him and the powder he ceded in turn. A moment later, that complete tidal wave of electricity coursed the other way as she reached her climax.

They were still in the dark.

When she finally pulled away from him she felt the throbbing of his hard, heavy length against her tongue and silently regretted the missing, velvety warmth when it was gone. Above her Kylo tried and failed to get his lungs to work properly, and on her knees Rey felt the most powerful woman in the world. She has brought _him_ to his knees. _Twice. The scary, mighty Kylo Ren._ Rey refused to wonder if any other had gotten him this wrecked, the possessive jealousy at the thought threatening to overshadow her victory, so she shoved that aside and pulled her fingers from inside herself, awkwardly wiping them on her pant leg.

The deed was done.

Now what?

She could hardly hear much above the pounding of her heart. As the all-encompassing heat of burning arousal and Kylo’s words spurring it on started to fade, a creeping mortificating coldness started settling. She started fumbling for her pants now tangled around her knees, movements rushed.

“Rey,” he said. Placating, worried, unsure and desperate. If he said one more word she’d break into tears. Hell, this was awkward.

“Just—you go ahead first…” she said above a whisper. It was better that way. “I have to… I—”

Five seconds. She counted five seconds. His saber flew through the air, he ignited it and fled like a wounded animal. And yet, between them in that stupid Force bond she could no longer deny she felt his longing and matched it. Rey took a few deep breaths and set to getting herself righted, found her saber and waited long enough to feel his presence moving farther and farther away, and then promised herself that if it happened in the dark, it didn’t happen at all. And if that failed, then she could always just remember she gotten her footing back, the power dynamics were righted once more, she owed him nothing, and the persistent want to run after him was nothing but hormonal.

If it happened in the dark…

 _Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweetheart_ , came his tired voice before he shut down their link and her head went eternally silent.

Funny he should say that. Rey knew for a fact sleep would not come easy for a very long time.

With a resigned sigh, she left. It wasn’t until she was halfway back to Luke that she realized the Kyber crystals had fallen out of her pockets in her rush to finally own something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's usually quiet... unless you give him a blowjob, I suppose. He's got a potty mouth on him when he's tres excite.
> 
> Comments and kudos water my soul. But you all know that already <3


	5. Moraband

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes are mine, you know the drill.

Once again she knew where to track him, and never once did she actually consider that these coordinates were falling into her lap a little too easily, a bit too effortlessly, because her mind was focused on something else when the ‘leaked intel’ just so happened to point her towards Moraband.

After all, it’s not like he had talked to her, so much as even goaded her _once_ since their last encounter. After her excruciatingly awkward departure from Ilum, Rey hadn’t seen hair nor tail of Kylo Ren. She knew now that their connection, their bond, allowed them to hear each other’s thoughts, to see each other as though they were standing _right there_. She also knew that it was mostly out of their control, the Force having a mind of its own, and yet perhaps said Force was punishing her just as much as he was. He hadn’t initiated a single conversation.

Every once in a while she could feel his hold slipping, in moments of anger or distress, when his feelings would leak into hers. She would try, in vain, to respond. Yet every time she made him aware that he’d accidentally let his guard down by trying to speak to him, he’d slam them back up. He was sulking, she’d tell herself with a scoff to try and disguise the pain of rejection, but then again… so was she.

She had told him for all intents and purposes to go away and he had done so spectacularly. And Rey found that a secret part of her, a rather big part of her _,_ missed him. She was even starting to miss his barb-wired comments in the deep of the night. She was no longer sleeping, either, something that would have satisfied him to discover. He’d once bared her secrets to the air of an interrogation cell, poking her about that which she hated most, her loneliness, her desperation for rest. It had ebbed, once. Now his avoidance made those insecurities creep closer, a void in the back of her head telling her something was missing, and she with no power to change it.

She could apologize, she supposed, but had that ever, _ever_ been their way?

So on the day she got a notice from Leia that she’d received intel about the next whereabouts of her son, for Leia still hoped fervently that he could be turned from his current path of destruction (by any means necessary), Rey didn’t question it. She simply nodded, grabbed the little slip of paper with nothing but numbered coordinates, and fought to sleep before her journey. She managed no sleep. In fact, she managed nothing but to work herself into a froth as she spent moonless hours staring at the little slip of paper and hoping he’d let his walls down. He didn’t.

By the time she got into the pilot’s seat the next day Rey was single-mindedly focusing on her desire for a _fight_. She didn’t even spare a thought for Leia and bringing her son back. No, she was busy thinking about the ways she was going to beat Kylo Ren senseless for ignoring her. Was it childish? Absolutely. Did she care? Not really. The slight perpetrated by his continued silence managed nothing but to make her fume. Granted, she had been the one to tell him to go ahead first. But telling him to go ahead _first_ was not the same as telling him to go _permanently._

She was being selfish and she knew it, but Rey’s compass had always been guided by two things: compassion and rage, her North and South. It was pointed strongly towards rage at the moment.

How dare he?

When she arrived in Moraband, she could hardly see. All there was to the waste of a planet was red sand. Red sand and violent winds as she struggled past large statues of long felled Darksiders standing sentinel and judging her for invading the sacrosanctity of their now desolate nest of vipers. Desolate except for one other, who no doubt was inside praying to his evil gods to give him more strength to turn to the dark side (possibly), or, more likely, looking for old artifacts. Since she was in such an unforgiving mood, she simply imagined him on his knees offering up parts of his soul to the Dark instead.

Rey huffed as she used the collar of her shirt to cover her nose, irritated that she’d traveled to what was essentially the malevolent version of Jakku without even so much as bringing her head wrap, she’d been so annoyed. Instead she shouldered through half blind with a staff for a walking stick, cursing every slippery step in the sand that writhed ready to swallow her whole. She coughed her lungs out when she finally stepped into the temple, taking refuge behind one of the thick ancient walls away from the whipping sand and heaving a deep breath, eyes scanning the large space. There was nothing. The only sounds she could pick up were that of the sandy wind lashing at the temple and her own harsh breathing between dry coughs. She went to push her hair away from her face and felt the grit of sand embedded in it, coating her head and her brows, then looked down to see she too had been coated in a thin layer of red as though she were bleeding from every pore. She almost blended into her surroundings.

With a grimace, she shook as much as she could off and made her way inside. She didn’t care what Kylo thought at seeing her in such a state. No, she had things to set _straight_. She was so angry, angrier than she’d ever been, angrier than she thought she possibly _could_ be, that anger growing with every step she took inside, her pulse beating in tandem with her steps on the rough stone floor of the vast sith temple. Rey pushed her staff on the loop over her back and grabbed her newly constructed sabers, igniting them to a bright yellow glow as she stomped forward.

 _Come out, Ren_ , she said.

A moment of silence.

 _So_ , he started, and the wave of relief she felt to finally hear him was indescribable. It was soon replaced with annoyance. _I see you’ve once again followed. What do you want this time? I thought you made it clear our last encounter you wanted me to leave you alone. Why are you here?_

Rey narrowed her eyes. Yes, why _was_ she here? Just because Leia kept handing her coordinates she magically produced from _somewhere_ didn’t mean Rey had to be the one to follow them every time. She stalled, then slowly came to a stop. Kylo chuckled.

 _So_ now _you decide to talk to me?_ Okay, so she sounded sullen. So what?

_Upset?_

Gods she was going to beat his ass and enjoy it so, so much. This time he didn’t laugh. He instead once again went quiet, because of course he wouldn’t make it easier for her to find him in this Maker forsaken pile of rocks and dust. She shook her head and continued on, sabers at her side, her white-knuckled grip hurting by the time she found him in a wide alcove with a fiery mosaic backdrop, surrounded by what, to her eyes, looked to be a bunch of discarded junk.

It took considerable effort to quiet down the scavenger in her at the loot, forcing herself to focus on her target instead.

“You’re a rightful bastard, you know that, right?”

Kylo was once again maskless. Why was it every time she ran into him now he was maskless? Every time the resistance received holos of battles, he wore his mask. Not for her, though. Never for her.

He watcher her out of the corner of his eye, taking in her brand spanking new sabers.

“I see you’ve constructed them,” he commented, going back to pushing junk around with the toe of his boot as if she posed no threat, nevermind her ignited sabers. “Congratulations.”

Rightful bastard indeed.

Fine, if that’s how he was going to play it, she’d go about it not the Jedi way, but the _Rey_ way. She switched off her sabers, clipped them to her belt, then grabbed a rock.

It was but a pebble, really. That’s what she told herself, anyway. It bounced right off the back of his head as Kylo stumbled forward with a curse too colorful for words. He swirled around with a snarl, fingers curled into nonexistent claws. Rey’s lips twitched upward, relishing in his pain even as her own head throbbed with the ghost sensation. At least she’d gotten his attention. He opened his mouth, probably to shout, but she cut him off,

“Yes, I _constructed_ them. No thanks to you. I had to go back to Ilum.”

“How’s that _my_ fault?” he asked, advancing like he wanted to throttle her before catching himself and jerking to a stop six feet away. Her smile widened, feeling no remorse and similarly no small amount of satisfaction at seeing him riled up. He thought he could ignore her, could he? Well, if he wanted an all-out fight, she’d give him one. She’d give him an all out brawl if that’s what it took. She’d be happy to acquaintance her fist with his jaw. But she didn’t answer his question. She instead took a step forward and glared.

“You shouldn’t have been there to begin with,” she said, accusations dripping from her tongue.

Instead of rising to her bait as Rey tried to pick a fight, nonsensical as it was, Kylo chose to infuriate her further by studying her from head to toe, as if he’d only just noticed she was covered in red grime for the first time.

“You should wear red more often,” he said. His head tilted minutely, eyes wandering over her cheekbones, her brow, her hair, her shirt. If he was looking for ways to infuriate her, not fighting back certainly did it. It felt, in some absurd way, as if they’d been together their whole lives and Kylo just _knew_ how to push her buttons. His disingenuous deflection grated on her like the sand stuck between her fingers.

Rey pursed her lips, gaze narrowed. “Why have you been—“ she couldn’t finish her sentence. Of course, he finished it for her.

His head tilted. “Ignoring you? Haven’t you been the one trying to block me out for months now? You told me to leave you alone last time. I figured you’d be delighted.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He took a step closer, the shroud of nonchalance suddenly disappearing to be replaced with the sort of intensity she hadn’t seen since Ilum, and Rey’s fingers twitched, taking a self-preserving step back out of instinct before her brain caught up with her limbs and she cursed. She would _not_ act as meek as a mouse.

The anger she felt before started bubbling to the surface again, hot, incandescent, virulent, irrational—

—it was mirrored in his eyes.

“What _did_ you mean?” Another step forward. She squared her posture, feet spreading to ground herself, willing herself to become an immovable object.

Rey clamped her mouth shut and glared. It only seemed to fuel him. She idly wondered if perhaps this temple erected to darkness was rubbing off on them both, but no— no, the Sith were long gone, and in the space between her and Kylo only stood intimate rage at all the things gone unspoken and unacknowledged for so long.

“What—” Another step. And another for each word thereafter until he loomed over her, eyes blazing and noses brushing, “—did you _mean,_ Rey?”

The truth is, she didn’t know. She just felt…

Jilted.

Instead of saying so, however, Rey dug her fingers into his tunic, wishing she could claw at his face instead but her nails had long been bitten away during multiple bouts of anxious distraction, so she couldn’t, she couldn’t—

She shoved him. _Hard_.

She had so much she wanted to say, but mostly she just wanted to say it with her _fists._ Really, how dare he? How dare he leave for good then saunter back in with some stupid little witticism like ‘ _you should wear red more often_ ’? The absolute jackass. She had tried to steel herself for this and yet the roles had once again switched. He was the immovable object and she the unstoppable force, and so inevitably they clashed.

And oh, how they clashed. They clashed until the very stones of the temple felt it, until the firmament forced itself to rearrange around them.

She shoved him and he landed on his back but not before dragging her with, iron digits wrapping around her slender arms to stop her from pummeling him, their bodies thudding to the ground and their silhouettes getting lost in a hazy cloud of red dust now disturbed. Rey tried to clock him on the jaw, unable to put vowels and consonants to her rage and so choosing to fight it out like she’d done so many times on Jakku, waiting for the pain, the burn.

They re-enacted their fight on Takodana on the dusty floor of Moraband, rolling and trying to subdue one another—or, really, Kylo trying to subdue, Rey trying to bite a chunk off him—limbs flying as they fought for dominance until all that could be heard was the mixed ragged song of their panting, and Rey was tiring. She was tiring, angry at him, angry at herself, angry at her limbs for trying to give in under the much more considerable weight of him, until…

Still with a menacing glare on his face, Kylo spun her by the waist so that he laid on the floor, deep breaths shaking his diaphragm and raven hair haloed around him in a complete, sweaty mess, his hands pinning hers to his chest to keep her immobile.

“Are you done?” He hissed.

Rey bared her teeth and caught the glint of his canines in warning. Like animals readying to draw blood.

Not even close, she thought to herself, snarling before she smashed her lips to his in lieu of hitting him with her fists, determined to mark him again, though it only managed to backfire as he quickly let go of her wrists and wound his fingers into her hair none too gently, fisting them at her scalp to pull her closer and devour her mouth with the same zealotry as he did anything else, trying to transfer her into his marrow just by kissing her.

And it wasn’t a kind kiss. It wasn’t a gentle kiss, or even a passionate one. It was angry, more teeth than lips even as their tongues skirted that danger zone that promised to catch one of them unawares and leave them bleeding. This time there were no encouraging words, no praises, no softly goading niceties to drive each other higher. No, this time they spoke in the language of the savage, the starved, in growls and groans and snarls as Rey’s fingers yanked at his tunic and he freed a single hand from her hair so he could rip at her arm bindings and her collar and her belt.

And yet their actions said everything words could never express in their desperation, and her mind was far too clouded with vindictive lust as she managed to work him out of his jacket and began tugging at his trousers, their kiss breaking only to draw breath and curse and, in Kylo’s case, _bite._ Rey may have been the one wanting to mark him first but he wasted no opportunity in lunging forward and latching to her neck, her shoulder, her breast, biting hard enough to make her scream then soothing the pain away with the flat of his tongue while Rey successfully managed to manhandle him out of his pants, palming him almost angrily and yet rejoicing in the electrifying sensation of having him, iron and velvet, hot and waiting in her hand again.

Kylo ground himself into her fist and snarled in her ear, pinching her nipple none too gently when she squeezed, the sound of his anger, of his incensed want as he tugged her closer by the very nipple he pinched between index and thumb, sent a flood of heat burning south and she whined. He chuckled and she hated him for it, even as he continued to rock into her fist and she continued to pump him, willing him to further hardness by sheer willpower.

“You could have just said you missed me,” he taunted low and raspy at her side, hot breath tickling her hair and sharp teeth latching onto her earlobe.

Rey let out an inhuman sound and fisted him tighter, uncaring of the similar noise he made in response, “Gods above, _shut up.”_

So he did. But his silence came at a cost as he wrapped his arm around her waist, denying her movement, and hoisted her higher until his eyes were level with her collarbone and, looking up at her with a mixture of awed lust and hot resentment, he snuck a hand from behind and promptly shoved a finger into her already clenching core. Her free hand immediately snapped to his lovely hair, fisting it to ground her in reality, and if it hurt him, he didn’t let on, struggling against her hold to latch onto her other breast to give it much needed attention.

Rey tried to continue her assault on his cock but he had her arm pinned between them, withholding that singular satisfaction as he pumped one long finger into her cunt and toyed at the entrance with another, her clit bumping every so often with his pelvis until she began writhing, knowing he could deny her everything and still gave all, teasing her to madness as he gently rocked himself into her still tight fist.

She was growing impatient, the heat coursing through her veins, tingling at her fingertips driving her impatience until she shook her head, ready to scream at the steady, insufferable pace he’d set with his finger. Rey once again bared her teeth and tried to grind down into his hand, her rage now of a different kind as she hissed,

“Fuck you, harder.”

If he had spoken at all Rey could just imagine the words would sound something like ‘ _I thought that’s what I was doing,_ ’ if only because the look on his face was so fucking smug his words would be nothing else, but instead he shoved a second finger in, making her yelp with the kind of stretch she’d never experienced before; then he flipped her and himself again as though she weighed no more than a feather and, trapped between her legs as he was, made his weight comfortable at home. He pumped twice into her, collecting her wetness before pulling his fingers out, finally earning himself a needy whine. Kylo smiled.

His fingers shifted, the wet pressure of his fingertips now right at the _other_ entrance, at the one she’d only dared lightly massage but never intrude, massaging her to madness as he began rocking his hard, hot cock against her clit. Rey arched and simultaneously wanted to slap him, but it was hard to do that when she was busy trying to dig her fingers into his abdomen for something to hold onto. She was now almost completely naked except for the light tank top shoved low on her tits, perking them up further for his inspection, her abused trousers pooled at her ankles, once again denying her the ability to wrap her thighs around him and lock him in place.

His own were shoved down just barely past his ass, so unable to do much more than lie there and take it, she instead set to fighting his clothes while he drew ragged low whimpers from her and continued to nip at her neck.

Fuck, she wanted _more_.

Even in his frustration, and perhaps because of it, Kylo got the hint. In a flurry of activity he’d pulled her pants clearly off, boots and all, while Rey divested him of his trousers and he kicked them off as well, once again tackling her hard back to the ground. She could feel the sharp bits of debris digging into her back and hated herself for enjoying it when Kylo’s pace stopped being gentle and he ground into her dripping pussy in a manic tempo, digging his nails into her thighs as she wrapped them around his hips and pulled him closer.

It was going to be the hate fuck of the century and Rey hadn’t stopped to think that maybe she should put her anger and frenzied lust aside because she’d never done this before, and she was about to do it with her mortal enemy, her dark little fantasy, the man who stood so opposite her in every way—

She felt his first intrusion and tensed. And then so did he. With a jerk he untangled himself from her neck and looked at her, _finally_ looked at her (and wasn’t it funny that this was all she’d wanted from the beginning?) as he tried to gently rock his hips again experimentally and found her so, so very tight.

“Rey,” he said, torn between a groan and a snarl, “what the fuck—“

“I _said,”_ she hissed, part from pain and part from renewed anger at him and herself and the galaxy in general for denying her so much, “Shut _. Up.”_

She would get what she wanted if it killed her. And right now what she wanted was _him_. She wondered if this was his first time, too. By the way he looked at her, she thought perhaps it was. Beneath all the pain, all the anger, there was adoration of the sort you only feel once in life. And she would claim that for herself at any cost. Rey raised her hips, hissing through the ache as she forcefully brought him deeper into herself, Kylo choking on a groan above her. His fingers tightened on her breast until it was painful, and despite it all he did his best to not just ram inside. What an oxymoron: careful hate sex.

The pain didn’t last long though. It was hardly more painful than a bite once he’d seated himself. After all, she’d already been dripping, and fuck he felt so good, stretching her in a way she’d never imagined her body could accommodate. She felt him twitch and slowly he lowered himself to her shoulder, taking in the moment in the same way she’d taken him in, peppering her with kisses that belied his true feelings as he started gently rocking when Rey tried to grind her hips against him.

It was so small, that window of tenderness, of careful consideration, and yet it felt as though something inside her had shattered, too full to contain it all and yet wishing to make space for more. More of him. And she hated that, too. Because it made her dependent. It made her weak. It made her cling onto the hope that one day someone would stay and make her feel things she never had before on a regular basis, just like this.

Rey bit into her lower lip until she could taste iron and dug her ankles into his lower back, urging him to go faster as she dug her fingers into his hair and once again tightened to the point of pain. His hips jerked in response, pumping her so hard she winced and yet once again got wetter. Apparently they both enjoyed a little pain with their pleasure.

He picked up the pace. Whatever he might have been thinking of, and whatever his thoughts shifted to in that moment of passive aggression on her part, he seemed to rouse from the cloud of contented tenderness and right back into anger. Perhaps he was feeling used. She didn’t know. She hoped he did, though, because that’s all this could be. They were using each other.

He set a punishing pace out of nowhere, knees spreading and forcing her own legs wider as he moved over her until his chin was at her temple, pushing her body to contort into itself until—oh, oh, fucking—

Smack. Smack. Smack. Harder, faster, the sound of him slapping against her ass as he punished her with well-timed, furious slams right to her cervix had her seeing double. He started uttering filth into her ear, too broken for her to understand as her mind dissolved and her being levitated above her at the sheer sensation of her nerves coming to life. He was so fucking big. Or at least, so fucking big for _her._ For someone who’d never gone past inserting her own fingers into herself and never this deep. She clamped around him convulsively trying to draw him nearer, keep him there, swallow him whole.

She needed control. She wanted his cock in her forever. She wrapped her legs around him again and with all her power, flipped him over, and that in itself was a struggle. In the maneuver, he fell out, and Rey immediately felt the loss even as she took in his startled expression.

She scrambled to position and without really knowing what the hell she was doing, Rey lowered herself onto him again until his back arched right off the dusty floor, the two of them now matted red with sweat and grime except _there_ —where they connected, because neither of them had allowed for much space for anything else to come between them, and Rey sank onto him until she felt him pushing hard into the deepest parts of her like his cock alone could shatter her body if it pressed that pressure point any harder. Rey closed her eyes.

She heard him exhale, inhale, exhale, as she attempted clumsy gyrations of her hips so long as the head of him kept pressing _right there_ , then felt his fingers digging into her hips painfully. Her eyes flew open, connecting with his unwavering gaze as he used his grip to move her, jerkily at first then slowly establishing a steady undulation. Her hips would bruise.

Rey closed her eyes again and imagined she was giving her virginity to someone she loved, a faceless being she fantasized about during her waking hours to offset the raven god appearing in her dreams, the one nestled between her thighs now, the one currently encouraging her by fucking lightly up into her as she found her courage and confidence and started bouncing. She gripped him inside her walls with all her strength and imagined, and then got angry over it all and bounced harder. She would fucking come. If this is how it was supposed to be, with no sweet words and no preambles and no big gestures, she would wring her pleasure from him and then claim his own.

She imagined, and yet her imagination kept only bringing up his face as he fucked her.

Because this was all if was. A good, hard, angry fucking so that when he sat up, spread his legs and held her immobile so he could jackhammer into her while hissing in her ear that she was _his_ and nobody else’s and he’d make her remember it until she couldn’t walk anymore—when he bitterly reminded her that this was _her_ doing and how dare she tell him to _leave_ like an afterthought when all of her belonged to him, to hold, to keep, to _fuck,_ Rey could only wrap her arms around his shoulders and hold on. And when his hips tired she took up the pace and bounced on his lap with his arms around her like she’d been possessed, and ground on him until her clit ached and her walls fluttered, and when he understood that she was close, when he reached down and pinched that bundle of nerves while unblinkingly taking in her flushed face and streaked cheeks and sweat-stamped hair, only then did she allow herself to let go.

Rey cried out a throaty moan and continued to bounce, and bounce and writhe and undulate her hips and drag from within the cobwebs of her being an orgasm that locked her muscles into place until she felt they might all snap, might all shred to ribbons as she convulsed on him to the point of physical pain. She panted as the waves started fading, then felt him throb.

He was holding on. The fucking _bastard_. How dare he? Kylo made to dislodge himself from her and she shoved him back with a resounding thud of his head, and she could imagine the stars dancing behind his lids, yet she refused to let go. She was slick, sensitive, and so, so tired, but she redoubled her efforts and rode him like her life depended on it, squeezing her muscles now that she knew she could squeeze that hard, determined to milk him and coat her insides because _this. was. hers._

This was hers and he wouldn’t deny her.

She pinched her eyes closed and grabbed his hands, intertwining their fingers on either side of his head, the curtain of her own hair swaying as she moved her body back and forth, back and forth, panting from the effort and feeling smug as his breathing started jerking, full on lungfuls of air leaving him in a rattle and chest fighting to bring more in. She opened her eyes and found him watching her, face contorting with pleasure as he involuntarily started fucking into her, unable to stop himself. She kept eye contact through the first spam, the first jerk of his hips. She kept eye contact as he untangled his hands and cradled her face with a gentleness foreign to their interactions unless it was in the dark. She kept eye contact at the renewed desire flitting across his eyes, as his tongue flicked to lick his lower lip and bite down a groan that he couldn’t keep from her regardless. She kept eye contact as his whole body tensed, hard as stone, and he gave one last powerful thrust into her body, one hand flying to pin her in place so he could empty his cum into her, teeth shredding his bottom lip.

She felt him coat her, paint her insides, and wondered if that was a good feeling or not, and she knew she’d be sore after fucking him through the sensitivity of her own orgasm. She didn’t care. She raised a finger to his mouth, pressing down on his lip until his teeth were forced to let go of it. Kylo licked the smear of blood on her fingertip then sucked the digit into his mouth, licking her clean of it and caressing her with his tongue before his eyes closed in exhaustion and he fell back, trying to catch his breath.

Finally he’d learned his lesson. He’d shut up.

Rey gently lowered herself to his chest and, for the first time noticing she was hardly pulling in more than shallow puffs of air, let herself breathe. She, too, remained silent.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all the love you've given this fic so far! you brought it over 1.2k kudos on 4 chapters alone which is way more love than I ever expected on this mess of angsty smut. I love you. 
> 
> Also the original chapter count was 6 but I think I might have to push it to 7 so I can ... you know... actually close it out, lmao. 
> 
> Comments and kudos water my crops.


	6. Jakku

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I missed you all.

_We can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep following you._

_I know._

_It was a mistake._

_So you’ve said._

_I’m sorry._

_So am I._

****

The beeping of her comlink that tore her away from Kylo’s arms where they lay in the dust had been the proverbial bucket of freezing water dumped on her head, reality crashing back as she scrambled to answer, keeping only her head visible and Kylo well out of sight while Poe grilled her on having disappeared with no communication and how could she worry Finn and everyone else like that?

Her bubble burst.

Rey refrained from saying Leia knew, because that would bring up questions nobody wanted to give answers to, including the man now passively watching her from the corner of the chamber as he toyed with her discarded leather wrist cuff absentmindedly, and after Rey resolutely attempted to right things, to put an end to this perpetual chase, her heart broke.

He agreed with her.

“I’m sorry.” She said, voice hoarse as she felt that small shard of hope that she wouldn’t be alone escape through her fingers. It had been nice to imagine while it lasted. She couldn’t— she couldn’t keep doing this to herself.

“So am I.” There was no hint of anger there. No sadness. Just the hollow ring of his agreement.

Her heart broke further.

Moraband left her adrift in an ocean of sadness, and so she returned to her life.

****

Rey wandered around the galaxy, purposeless. Sure, she still visited the rebel base, and trained with Luke, and learned to be a proper fighter, and a proper leader, and a proper Jedi, whatever that meant, filling the hours of her day that had to be filled so she wouldn’t inspect them too closely and find the void left in them.

There was nothing but silence, and she couldn’t blame him. The link between them opened and closed at will, and every time they stood there and watched each other from across the galaxy, faces blank, drinking in each other’s gaze without a word until it closed again and the image of him faded. Where his voice and his presence resided in her head there was only an echo, filled with a sort of resignation as if the Force had realized that they had _given up,_ so why bother?

She could hear him, sometimes, when he addressed other people. She could feel the ghost of him and taste the alcohol he liked to drink on the top of her tongue during chilly nights; she could smell the scent of sweat from a day’s worth of training and feel his exhaustion and fell asleep to the lingering fragrance of his soap, but those where things millions of miles away, and she only experienced them like the ghost of a lost limb, imagined but insubstantial.

She wondered if he could feel, hear, or taste her, but she never asked. She fell asleep to the same words every night: _You’re so lonely. So afraid to leave_.

She didn’t know if she thought it on her own or if the specter of their first meeting did. There was no way to tell. Rey bunched her fingers around nothing and watched her breath mist then dissipate in front of her small cot by the fire, her mind numb, blank except for a dull ache she couldn’t pinpoint that nonetheless made it hard to swallow, her nose tingling and her tear ducts itching, just as she’d done for so many nights she’d lost count.

She wouldn’t cry. Not yet.

****

She hadn’t seen Jakku in almost two years now, that glowing little marble ball of dust and suffering suspended in the nothingness of space. It hit her, out of nowhere, that she’d never looked back when she first left on her wild adventure with Finn what seemed like eons ago. She was seeing her own personal hell as others must have for the first time in her life.

Rey pressed her fingers to the viewport and watched her life, her meager, hunger stricken life, flit across her vision in sharp detail, slowed down for the single purpose of reminding her how much she’d suffered. She’d lived more life in two years than she had in almost twenty, and it continually felt as though she were playing catch up on a childhood and adolescence she had never been allowed before. Her fingers curled in on themselves and she heaved a sigh, turning to her controls, determined. The last few months without _him_ had felt so empty. She needed that sense of familiarity again, of constancy, even if it was the second best that was Jakku.

When she landed the hot wind slammed into her and she sighed. It felt sickening to think of this place as home, and yet, that’s exactly what she felt. The hot air was familiar, the sand beneath her boots like the welcome mat to her old life, the scorching sun her oldest friend. Immediately she pulled two hair ties out of her pocket and quickly bound up the rest of her hair into her customary three buns, remembering part of why she’d kept it up for so long as the beads of sweat started gathering at the nape of her neck. The stiff, cloying hot breeze felt like a godsend the second it it her newly exposed skin.

Rey looked all around her. Over that small hill was her old home. She couldn’t risk landing too close to Plutt, he’d have her head for taking off with the Falcon, so this would have to do. Hopefully the teedos wouldn’t be coming around any time soon to try and rob her dry. It was out of the way enough.

With that last thought, Rey took off towards the outpost. Plutt was no longer there. Instead one of the overseers took his place, one who had been less nasty to her than Plutt had ever been. She got in line and waited patiently until she got to the counter and then, with twitching fingers and a nervous bouncing of her throat, Rey handed over a brand spanking new part.

“Ten portions,” called the overseer, surprisingly much more giving than Plutt ever was. He was about to slam them on the counter. “Back to scavenging, I see.”

Rey blocked his hand, offering a tight smile. “No, not scavenging. Keep the portions. This is for information.”

“Oh?”

The overseer had been around this outpost as long as Rey ever remembered being on Jakku. If anyone knew, perhaps…

“Has anyone come asking for me?”

The overseer took in her wild buns, the reddish blush from walking all the way to the outpost, bordering on what would tomorrow become a burn, the tips of her sand blasted ears, and _tsk’d_. His voice held pity. He had seen one too many orphans.

“No, I’m afraid. No one ever comes back, at least not willingly,” he said, giving her as close to a kind glance as he ever had, beady yellow eyes dimming, and Rey knew he referred to her, too. “But you know that, don’t you?”

She lowered her eyes to hide the beginnings of the sting. “Thanks anyway.”

The tears didn’t start until she found herself facing the wall of stretch marks inside her old dwelling.

Everything had been taken: her tools, the table, her meager silverware, the ship flying simulators she had so lovingly cared for and cherished, anything that looked remotely useful… the only things left were dried flowers (now so frail Rey feared touching them else they’d disintegrate) tossed carelessly on the ground, an old resistance helmet nobody could do anything really useful with, her childhood doll nobody cared for (no time for play, in Jakku. It’s work or die), and her old mattress, so lumpy not even a greedy teedo would want it.

She fell on her knees and stared at the thousands and thousands and _thousands_ of marks, of wasted days, of life unlived and unloved, and wept.

****

There had been no need to even look up from her seat, salt stained tracks having long dried on her cheeks and yet the second she felt him they once again became useful paths for the fresh round of tears. She had been so alone. So, _so_ desperately lonely.

Rey heard the now familiar stomp of his footing as it neared the entrance then a softening as he slowed. He looked out of place in her small home, too small to contain anything but the past version of herself when she was a foot and a half shorter and a million times more optimistic. In contrast he dwarfed the space, crowded her in from all sides even with so much distance between them. Rey stared at her wall of empty days and lost childhood, blinking through the blur to try and focus only to lose it again.

He said nothing, simply stood stretching and contracting his fingers as if he longed to go to her and wrap her in his embrace. She must have called to him somehow, or perhaps her loneliness had. The only other being who had truly been a constant by her side, regardless of how many wars, ideologies and systems away they stood apart. After a moment of indecision, Kylo crossed the floor and lowered himself gingerly beside her. He removed the mask, the hiss loud and unrepentant in the silence as he then placed it aside. He stared at the wall, hands awkwardly on his knees as he crouched.

“Found what you were looking for?” He said. It was a statement as much as a question.

Yes, she had finally found the threads of her abandonment in glorious detail. No, she hadn’t found her parents. She knew they would never return for her, had somehow known all along, but the skeleton left behind of a wasted life, pillaged by locals who would remember her as nothing more than another orphan… that skeleton settled right above her own. It merged into her marrow until she knew nothing but sadness.

She tried. She tried not to cry and still a sob escaped her.

Kylo lowered himself fully, sitting against the wall now and facing her, making no move other than to cross his legs into a cradle and place his hands on his knees once more, making a nest of his body for her to crawl into. She didn’t think twice. Rey crawled on hands and knees and straddled his legs then buried her face in the crook of his neck and wept, his arms wrapping protectively around her automatically, one arm crushing her to his wide, strong chest with an equally strong, even heartbeat reminding her of her own mortality. The other hand buried itself in her hair at the nape of her neck, safe and secure as he shielded her from the world just as she hid her tears from him.

He didn’t say a thing. He simply held her, gently stroking the fine hairs beneath his fingertips in the kind of careful lover’s embrace that made her feel uncomfortable and cherished simultaneously. She didn’t begrudge him his following her. He was the only one left.

She placed a tender, close-lipped, teary kiss to the tender underside of his jaw and he returned her thanks by kissing her temple, burying his face in her hair and stroking her back with a kind of fatal tenderness that broke her. Her tears renewed, slower than before, to honor the hollow ache inside that made her wrap her arms around him and hold on tight. His own hold refused to lessen, and if there had been any possible way to be closer to him Rey knew he would have already pulled her into by now. She closed her eyes and sighed, the thumping of Kylo’s steady heart and even rise and fall of his chest as he breathed into her hair a soothing balm.

Once more she kissed his jaw. This time he stilled his careful, methodical petting on her lower back. She wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t breaking, splitting at the seams. She was slowly filling in the hollow pit of her soul with gratitude for what little he dared give her and she found his walls had long been lowered. She hadn’t noticed, not when she was so wrapped up in her grief, how he had torn down those walls to make more room for her to pour out her agony into him to keep her own little vessel of a heart from fully shattering. She knew he was holding it inside him, making a new home for it, one that would haunt him even as it lessened her own burden, and that trickle of gratitude became a rushed current, even as she stilled her tears through sheer determination.

They didn’t talk. Rey didn’t look him in the eyes when she leaned back and placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth, and Kylo didn’t push beyond looking at her own lips when she tugged at his tunic hesitantly. She may be alone, sometimes, but never lonely. He’d made sure of that. He wouldn’t let her.

Kylo gently moved his hands to dip into the soft skin under her shirt, watching her closely. Another kiss and she felt the stirrings of want beneath her. He was never alone, his master wouldn’t let him, yet had always been so lonely. Just like she had been before, so Rey opened her side of their bond and became a vessel for his loneliness, lest it break him. His eyes closed, fluttering shut at the sensation as he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d missed her, he’d missed her so very much. Just as much as she’d missed him.

Her hands became more daring, more adventurous, her fingers digging under the zipper of his tunic, pushing it away from his chest so she may pepper him with soft pillowy kisses over the scars she had given him, feeling that steady heartbeat swell and quicken faster, the heat of him seeping into her fingers and flowing into her core as he, too, pulled the ties from her buns and let it all fall around her like a curtain. He liked touching it, she knew. He had lost his gloves while she wasn’t looking just so he could touch it, as if he wished to caress every single strand, Jakku sand embedded in it and all.

One item of clothing followed another in the slowest of disrobing sessions she’d ever experienced, every piece exposing skin soon to be covered by exploratory kisses that warmed her until she was clothed in the softness of his mouth instead. Rey whimpered when he finally placed the lightest of kisses on a nipple, the two of them maneuvering out of their trousers like two people who had all the time in the world, and when she positioned herself and sunk down onto him he once again wrapped her in those powerful, possessive arms, and Rey knew safety.

They didn’t talk. They hardly looked into each other’s eyes. There was no need when each held the other’s soul in the back of their heads. There was no need to study body language or longing looks when she could feel them as if those sentiments were her own— and they were.

Face buried in his neck again, Rey began to move. And when she tired he took over, iron grip around her waist in the same crushing embrace while he thrust his hips up in their maddening lovemaking. It didn’t matter the speed, she thought, and knew he felt the same. This wasn’t about fucking. About getting off. This was, simply, a way to connect, to say _thank you for being here for me_ for the both of them. A way to guard themselves against a cruel universe who’d see them apart. A way to feel some relief, some compassion, a way to dissipate their rage into something… else.

Soon enough though it started to feel _too_ good. Soon she couldn’t still her hips and leave him to his maddeningly slow pace. Soon she found herself bracing against his shoulders as she took over and rode him faster and faster, panting into his skin as he groaned into her ear. Soon he lost control, all sense of restraint forgotten as he took her hips and refused to let up, the sound of skin on skin slapping harsh and delicious in the stillness of her old home, his grunts and encouragements spurring her towards a tangible yet invisible finish line, knees chafed and spine straining with the effort and still she wanted more. His fingers found her clit, though, and that was all she needed.

When her orgasm hit, she didn’t cry. No, she laughed instead. She threw her head back and giggled in ecstasy that loosened her tongue and let the words to her darkest secret slip in a whisper as she said,

“Gods, I love you.”

She didn’t expect his reaction. She didn’t expect him to freeze as though a bucket of cold water had been poured on him this time around and subsequently splashed all over her when her mind caught up to her mouth.

Their eyes finally met.

He looked scared. He looked…

Maker, he looked _terrified_.

Rey forced her tongue to unglue from the roof of her mouth as she hid her face in her hands before thumping her forehead on his still erratically rising chest, her sweat and his mingling skin to skin while she composed herself and immediately retracted her words with a weak apology about orgasmic highs.

He didn’t believe her. He didn’t believe that she loved him just as much as he didn’t believe her weak-ass excuse and she wanted to die half buried in the desert, left to choke on sand, just like her AT-AT had. She knew he didn’t believe her, but instead of calling her out on either thing he simply wrapped his arms around her again, holding her for a moment before uttering the words that would destroy her.

Words she had previously said to him.

****

_We must return to what we were._

_If you wish._

****

They ignored Jakku. They tried to forget. She tried to remember why she’d begun to chase him to begin with and he tried to forget how scared he was that she’d be taken from him like everything else in life, and so chose to bury it.

They returned to their game of cat and mouse, reversed to roles of humble hero and agitating antagonist, to their quips and snark and goading, to everything that never reached below the surface to the feelings lying not so dormant beneath.

They returned to the status quo until one fateful day on Arkania.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have come full circle.  
> All mistakes my own. Alas, that's the curse of writing on one's phone at night. Shall be fixed as I find them, etc.


	7. At The Edge of The Unknown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my excitement to bring this to you, I just posted as soon as I finished writing. Editing, _who_? I don't know her.  
>  (I hope it's not junk. don't worry I plan to come back and make sure it's nice and neat later).

Her ship arrived on a tiny moon floating amongst a multitude of much bigger ones surrounding a blue giant. She had almost lost her life making it through a Kessel-like run with debris and meteors crashing at crazy speeds, and then navigating her stolen ( _borrowed_ ) ship through a magnetic force field that she was pretty sure fried the vessel’s internal locator as she entered the unknown regions, essentially cutting her off from the rest of the galaxy. But she arrived, and that was what counted, even if her poor little ship would be in dire needs of some tender love and care once she made it back home.

When she landed at the edge of nowhere, feet landing on smooth grass swaying in the sea breeze, the sun beating softly on her skin, Rey took a second to cherish the feeling and inhaled. She had done so on Takodana, the first time, and again on Ahch-To, and on every planet she’d visited since. Water was no longer a strange thing, and neither was grass, but that small sense of wonder never abated at discovering something new. Rey very much doubted it ever would.

She found him by the sea, sitting on the lowered ramp of his ship in a humble civilian ensemble, his countenance strange until she realized he’d pulled half his hair back in a semblance of a bun much as she’d taken to doing, seemingly enjoying the breeze in his own way. In his hands he twirled a tiny white flower, it’s yellow pollen center cheery and bright. Her heart twisted at the sight. Rey approached quietly, as if approaching an easily startled rabbit.

“My biggest mistake to date,” he began, not bothering to look up as he continued to twirl the flower between thumb and index finger with the care of someone holding onto glass, “was letting you go after Jakku.”

The ache in her heart at the sight of a familiar flower intensified at the memory of their shared exchange of vulnerability a year prior. They had had so many encounters since then, so many fights. They had returned to the chase, Rey almost managing to convince herself that the previous months had all been a hallucination, shutting the memory of her confession deep in the vaults of her mind, left to gather cobwebs lest it bring her pain. Now he brought it up without preamble as he toyed with a daisy much like the ones in that one field where they had once baffled. By the end they couldn’t even finish their fight as Rey had exploded with giggles at seeing him covered in bruised petals stuck in his hair, calling him a flower pot, and he telling her she had no room to talk, likening her to one of the little flowers and making fun of her stature with a smirk. It’s hard to fight a foe in such a circumstance. Unfortunately that nickname for her had stuck.

Rey looked away, trying her hardest not to focus on his impossibly dark lashes.

“Is that why you’ve called me here? To rehash past mistakes?”

“Was it really?” He asked, following her gaze towards the shoreline. “I told you what my mistake was, but was it really so awful for you?”

She swallowed. Kylo returned his eyes to his flower. He’d abused it so much despite his care that tiny petals were beginning to fall. After a moment, Rey mustered her courage to look at him again.

There was a whole universe between them, he felt so far away, and yet she itched to reach for him regardless. Clearing her throat, she summoned her courage and walked up the ramp, lowering herself beside him to get a better look at the little struggling daisy falling apart under his tender touch.

“No.” The admission lifted something off her shoulders by virtue of being said, and Rey finally breathed a sigh of relief. “No, it wasn’t.”

No matter how much pain she’d felt in the aftermath, for once Rey had been honest. She had allowed herself to be, well, _herself._ To feel and express it instead of hiding it behind glass thin layers of denial as she’d done with everything else in her life. If only for a moment, she had been free, and she had laughed and enjoyed it.

Kylo nodded. He stopped toying with the flower and handed it to her care. Rey continued where he left off until eventually it began to wilt. She set it aside and focused on the distance, past her ship towards what seemed like a small white stone cottage built into the ground. Rey squinted, her well-honed scavenging eyes picking up power converters and automatic water collectors nestled into the side of the structure; a small, unplanted land lot beyond it, happily nestled on the grass, sitting overseeing the calm shore beyond. She stole a glance at Kylo then went back to her study of the landscape. He had always been hard to read on the best of days, and currently his expression was entirely blank. He would speak when he wished to and not a second before.

They spent a long while in companionable silence like this until he finally graced her with his voice, words tentative, as if testing the waters. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I called you here specifically?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Your message was clear enough.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I’m here, as you requested. The only caveat is, as you know, that if you hoped this would be the moment I went with you to your master willingly, you’re clearly out of your mind.” Rey stuck her nose up in the air. Kylo huffed and fell silent again.

It stretched, and Rey was happy to simply let it be, listening to the whooshing of the sea and letting it lull her into quiet contentment. She studied the little cottage again. Kylo seemed to be doing the same.

“Snoke’s dead,” he said after a long time, then continued on as if he had simply said water was wet, ignoring her startled jump, “surely you must have known I never truly intended to take you to him.”

Rey blinked.

Snoke was dead.

The whole war, the biggest reason there had always been an ocean between them, gone. Just like that. With a single proclamation. He has upended her world and hadn’t even looked her in the eye as he did so.

“When?” she spluttered, “ _how?_ ”

“Two days ago,” he replied. Two days ago… “turns out there had been no need to spend over a year looking for ways and artifacts to defeat him. Having to leave you behind a second time was motivation enough to expedite the process.”

Rey’s lungs skipped, then stopped. She turned her whole upper half very slowly, very deliberately, to get a full look at him. He was squinting against the sun and the breeze, fingers hanging loosely between his bent knees and breathing even. His rolled up sleeves proudly displayed the scars on his forearms, scars won by fighting with her. Injure—injure but never kill had been the name of their game. She was wondering if his intention now was to kill, bypassing injury to her person entirely, or if the injuries of the last two years counted as foreplay enough before the slaughter. She watched him, and in turn he tilted his head and pinned her in place with pretty honey colored eyes.

They were beautiful, those eyes.

He smiled. A genuine smile. Then he looked away, and still Rey couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t bring herself to do what he’d done and focus on anything other than his profile.

“I won’t go to my mother,” he said out of the blue, and Rey still stared.

“I assumed as much,” she said finally, not daring to blink. In the face of the magnitude of all his confessions, his reminding her of something she’d already known seemed inconsequential. She had stopped trying to bring him back to his mother for any reason other than as an excuse to see him, just as he’d inadvertently revealed he used his master as the same form of excuse. Rey’s heart ached nonetheless for a mother who had lost her son, for a woman who held hope and yet had resigned herself to the inevitable. “She misses you.”

“I know,” he whispered, the first true display of emotion flashing across his face, pain and regret dimming the light in his eyes. “I did what I must.”

She wanted so very badly to reach out to him, to touch his hair and pull it out from its little bun and run her fingers through it as he’d done with hers; to make a cradle of her body for his pain as he’d once offered, to wipe away the tears he wasn’t shedding once they came. But she couldn’t. Not after Arkania. Not without his say so. So instead she reached out with the Force, expecting to meet a wall yet determined to try regardless as she met—

—nothing.

There was nothing there. Rey gasped, an unintended reaction that should have never been voiced as she scrambled for purchase of _something, anything,_ but where he had once existed there was only emptiness.

No.

No… _please, no._

“Kylo—“ she whispered and scrambled to sit in front of him, to position herself in his field of vision until she was inescapable as she forgot her earlier hesitation and reached for his face, hands on both sides of his jaw to _make him_ look at her. Make him _answer. “_ Ben, what have you done?”

He smiled sadly again. “I did what I must.”

There was nothing. He was her phantom limb.

“I can’t—you cut yourself off from the Force, Ben. What were you thinking?! You cut yourself—I can’t feel you!” She wanted to scream at him in a fit of desperation for his damned blasé attitude at the terrible thing he’d done that had once again left her alone in the world. How could he—

“Neither can Luke.” He brought his hands over hers and cupped them, unknowingly leaning into her touch as he studied her face for a moment, letting the significance of his actions settle on her shoulders.

She couldn’t feel him in the Force.

Neither could Luke.

Neither could his mother. And other than they, there was no one else but Rey who would know… he had, essentially, disappeared.

“The Order?”

“The command is dead, the rest…” he shrugged, “I can’t dispatch an army on my own. But _the command is dead._ ”

He had been part of the command. Rey’s brain worked at hyper speed. They assumed him dead, as would his family. The only person left alive to know he was well and alive was her, and he had trusted her with the knowledge. He had _trusted_ her. She could chain him up right now and take him back to the resistance to face justice, betray that trust to do what she’d sworn she would do were she to get her hands on him as she was now— she was armed, he was not. She had the Force, he was but a blotted smear on the fabric of it, powerless were she to act fast enough.

He had trusted her.

He wore that trust on his sleeve, even as his eyes remained guarded. Rey finally managed to look away and take in the details, _truly_ take them in: the cottage not far away with clearly functioning resources, long prepared and waiting, his stolen nondescript ship, his civilian clothes, the tied back hair that rearranged his features, the lack of so much as a hunting knife. Kylo Ren had disappeared, he had _made him_ disappear.

This was it. It was down to her and her alone. No more games, no more mistakes. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes now.

“Why?” Her question came out as nothing more than a hoarse croak. She couldn’t read him, she had no flow of his emotions to go by. Rey was flying blind and the thought terrified her. How had she let herself become so reliant on that connection? _How?_

“Why do we do anything?” He gently started tugging her hands off his face to rest between them, her fingers engulfed in the warmth of his much larger ones, pupils expanding as he studied her. “Why do you and I live as we have lived for the past so many months, Rey? Or were your words on Jakku truly just the result of an orgasmic high?”

_Gods, I love you._

She felt her heart somersault.

_I can’t sleep most days and it has nothing to do with my demons anymore._

She opened her mouth to speak and his face flashed with an indescribable look. A hungry sort of need, perhaps. It disappeared again behind guarded wariness.

_We can either put a name to this, or we can end it now._

She let her mouth close, eyes dancing on his. This was it. It was down to her and her alone. There was no room for mistakes, for wrong choices.

_You have always had a choice. More than I ever have. And you’ve always chosen to run, a choice I’ve never had. Always chosen to leave, unlike me, who am unable to. But you’ve also chosen to return. Why do you keep returning, then?_

She _did_ have a choice, more than she’d ever given him, and he had still chosen her against all odds. Chosen to run, chosen to leave his master and his world and his goals and _chance_ for something else just to be with her. He had chosen to return to her in the only way that truly mattered. Rey’s eyes started stinging. She couldn’t feel him. He was so close and yet so far away, and she knew with a certainty that mirrored her heart’s need to beat that had he cut himself off from the Force before this she would have razed the galaxy just to find him and have him close again.

She had a choice. And her choice was simple.

She couldn’t leave. Not without losing him forever.

Rey licked her lips and trembled, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles and taking a steadying breath, anchoring herself in his gaze.

“How do I do it?” She rasped, swallowing compulsively. Her ship had been stolen, her commlink fried along with the locator system of the dashboard. Her few belongings were already on her person. “How do I do it, Kylo?”

He tilted his head. “It’s just Ben now. I like how you say it.” A hand reached up to cradle her cheek as he rubbed soothing circles against her skin and he leaned in to place a gentle kiss between her eyebrows and murmur. “You _must_ be sure this is what you want. I won’t force it on you. So, are you _sure?_ ”

She nodded against his lips.

****

They stood at the edge of the ocean, fingers intertwined. Her sabers were drowning _somewhere_ along with the shattered remains of his after a short flight, unrecoverable now that she had no means with which to rescue them. She felt strangely hollow, there was nothing inside. Not his voice, not the preternatural awareness of the threads of the Force, nothing but an empty lightness she hadn’t felt since it awoke in her as a child, her burden to bear as well as her destiny.

She had turned her back on it, and so had he. They stared at the water, counting waves and birds and clouds, silent in their contemplation yet refusing to spend a second apart, not even by a finger. After so long connected by the supernatural, they would have to make do with simple words and physical contact, and she could never regret her choice.

Her hair swayed unbound, just how he liked it, the breeze foreign yet familiar. His fingers rubbed gentle, lazy circles on her hand, his attention just as far away as her own. This was it. This would be home.

They knew nothing and no one except that this tiny secluded moon hidden amongst so many more would be their refuge, hidden from everything and everyone in the unknown parts of the universe. They would need clothes, and food, but he’d told her there were towns here they could go to. No one would know them. No one would find them. So far removed from civilization were they that the scars of war and politics of the galaxy were only but legends here, most people imagined those things to be entirely made up. No one could reach them here.

A gust of wind rustled her sleeves and Rey shivered, and he instinctively wrapped an arm around her and brought her into the safety of his side. Then they made their way back to the cottage in silence.

****

They returned to the beach that night to stare at the stars as two newly freed people, as one single entity onto themselves, and made love on the giant blanket spread on the sand, losing themselves in each other and the vastness of said freedom stretching in all directions.

She touched him as she would someone new and he explored her as he would have the first time, had their first time been different. He caressed her curves and kissed he shoulders, her breasts, the sensitive crooks of her elbow, the tingling, tickling skin of her waist. He licked around her navel and made love to her hipbones and spread her open to breathe her in before laving her in warmth with his tongue as he’d already done twice before that day.

She gripped his arms and showered him with kisses and caressed his hair then gripped it, and cried out a symphony made for his ears only even as her thighs muffled his hearing while he pulled from her the sweetest of releases. And when she gave him what he wanted he mapped the dips and hills of her body until she was lulled into contentment, only to begin the cycle again. He claimed as he had never claimed, memorizing her from head to toe, and she allowed herself to be lost as she returned the exploratory touches.

She touched him as if he were made of glass and marble and iron, she luxuriated in the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips as she grabbed handfuls of his hair and his arms, his shoulders and hips and back; as she ground her body over his and burned her fingerprints on his flesh, committed to memory the contours of his lips and collarbone and powerful thighs, and watched his eyes glow brighter than the firmament above them.

She glowed and burned as he came undone in her hand and her mouth and inside her, taking the time they had never been afforded before to wait out the long moments until it was time to crest that hill of pleasure together again, contented to spend it whispering sweet nothings and sweeter promises to each other in between languorous kisses and shy, first-time-for-everything revelations of what each liked and how to achieve them. They wrapped themselves in their blanket when it grew cold and threw it back off when their combined body heat burned too bright as they writhed and thrust and rocked into each other and let the universe be their witness, until they lay sated and exhausted and their only companions were the waves crashing not too far off. And when their eyes grew heavy they walked weak-limbed and drunk on pheromones and endorphins in the middle of the night to their new home, collapsing on the bed in a tangle of drained limbs before waking to a new day.

A new day.

Rey stepped outside wrapped in the giant blanket they’d thrown to the floor after covering him with the sheets, then looked at the little plot of unfarmed land. She would turn it into a garden, and she’d grow all the food she never could on Jakku.

The sky was pinkish red as a peach, the air cool, the whirring of the generators humming along, and not a single soul in sight. She smiled. She would miss her friends, but it had taken her so little to convince her of her choice. She’d gladly trade it all again for this small slice of peace. She couldn’t feel him, not like before, but who needed to make sure he was alive across a galaxy when she could simply look inside and see his chest rising and falling in his peaceful slumber? No, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it, nor to care for the rest.

She had always had a choice. She had finally made the right one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for joining me in this short but emotional little journey. 
> 
> If you've liked my work, stick around for [Aegis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11029560/chapters/24582429) (a retelling of Hades & Persephone with my own twist) and for [Kindred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9484292/chapters/21460334), which is going to essentially be this story's characterization of Rey and Kylo in long form as they traverse their relationship in an in-verse alternative universe where, be it fate or chance, they had met once before TFA. (Don't worry, I don't anticipate either fic remaining rated T). 
> 
> And if you'd like to keep up w/ all my other nonsense, feel free to visit my tumblr: lucidlucy.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you for reading and for putting up with my extending this thing, and making it so long, since it was essentially meant to be a one shot that grew legs. oops.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments & Kudos make me happy *blows kiss*  
> Come hang out with me on tumblr, **@lucidlucy** , where I post writing updates & other SW nonsense.


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